It could be assumed that one or two of the original crew opted to stay on Lorien.

If anyone is wondering, Omar appears to have aged little, if at all. His high Mega-Stamina, Adaptability, and Quantum level should stave off the ravages of time.

Re Andrew: As Omar begins to pick up taint, he will spend time with Andrew. Either to keep him company or as a research subject, as Omar is now personally concerned with taint. When Andrew needs a break, Omar can suggest some light sparring.

By the late 80's, Ulric would have more contact with Andrew and Cody, if they were willing. Ulric has developed quite an intellect in the intervening years and could help out with scientific and medical advancements they are working on and liasioning with the public at large to get those advancement's out there, as well as putting forth problems to the two of them they might not be aware of in their seclusion.

What Ulric has is time, so he can help out as needed. Just let him know!

Joani didn't change much agewise. She looks more like 21 now, but who can really tell the difference?

Re: Omar
Andrew would be more than happy to round out his combat skills w/you and if you are gaining Taint it will be useful to have another subject to study.

Re: Ulric
One thing Andrew will need is the support of the international community to continue pumping resources into scientific study. Particle accelerators and colliders cost billions and trillions of dollars and the kind of massive scale that man countries would be hard pressed to contain fully within their own borders.

Re: Aging
Andrew kept up the facade for a while then just came out. It was easier to concentrate on his "normal" self image than to keep himself aged AND in control of his subconscious use of shape shift. That was all before he started having bigger issues with Taint. Now he does his best to stay outside of the public eye while staying influential within the scientific community (3 dot influence). When he is not concentrating he will often use his tendrils and homunculi to do things without thinking. Similarly he'll modify his senses or body to adapt to the task at hand. For a baseline it can be disconcerting, even for Novas I suspect his behavior may be somewhat unsettling with the knowledge that at least some of it is caused by taint. It probably doesn't help that his homunculi have minds of their own and often need to be yelled at or cajoled to do what he wants.

Pocket change.

More seriously I'm expecting that we're going to have to throw Trillions (with a T) dollars into Taint research before we get anything usable. That's a big number, with over a 50 year period I think it's doable.

My understanding from Fox is that I need to get to 5 dots in Nova Medicince (Prerequisite Medicine 5) before I can actually create and execute a treatment for taint. Right now Andrew is at 2 dots (which is the most Fox allowed me to purchase).

Further the cure will require a specialization for each patient AND a great deal of time to cure said patient (i.e. you must buy off the taint with Exp). Not sure how that is going to work, I would imagine Fox will cross that bridge when I get close to Nova Med 5

The flip side of the cost argument is that there are probably fewer than a handful of people on this earth who (in year 2000) will even HAVE Nova Medicine. Myself, Morgan, maybe Michael. So the cost will actually be lower because there will be fewer people working on it but they will be WAY more smarter

Actually, the Trillions will not be an issue as will be explained in the update. Speaking of which, sorry I haven't posted yet. I rebuilt my machine over the last two days, and today I'm playing catch up on the things that should have gotten done over my 'weekend'. Just stopping by the boards every couple hours to make a comment now and then. If work isn't crazy tomorrow I should have enough time to get the update put together. I wrote several pages of stuff last week, but it sounded horrible to me and I couldn't bring myself to publish such garbage, so I will go back and rewrite it into something more entertaining.

MOre to come shortly but wanted to respond to this immediately:



Cody is now the master-manipulator and has Contacts at 5. Even if he should for some reason not have a contact in a particular area his network of telepaths will.

Temporal Manip is rare even in a regular timeline. Over 72 years have passed since Hammersmith and there are only a couple Q6 individuals on the planet in 2000, Michael being the only one not in the Cabal. Power scale has been intentionally curbed by you and your changes to the timeline and your indoctrination process. There is one but he won't be very powerful and couldn't do much beyond regress someone maybe 20 or so years at a time and chooses not to perform this service because of ethical questions.

Who in our cabal bought Q6?????!!!!

Not me, though Ulric needs the services of a Temporal Manipulator to remain middle aged. He's not interested in looking, or feeling too young, or too old. He figures he can start aging for real once the team leaves this timeline and they are all on their own once again.

With his massive dice pools in Bureaucracy and Influence, Ulric should be able to get almost any level of funding accomplished for the big future research programs. He now has impressive understandings in Engineering, Medicine, and Sciences, so he can help out with whatever researches are needed by the team. Just keep in mind in the first few decades that Ulric has Daddy-duty and that comes first.

By the late 1970's, Ulric will become once again a once more public nova and helping with any agendas the team might have. Just let him know and he's on it.

If I had to guess Id say Andrew went for Q 6. Shapeshift means he already had at least Q4. That or maybe Omar. Possibly Morgan. Or maybe Fox miswrote his text, since I thought Michael *is* a part of our cabal...

Its Omar. He has Q6. I know it from a PM-Conversation we had because of the Paragons.

IMHO your scale is off. If we build it, they will come. I.e. if we throw Trillions of dollars at it over a period of decades, then people will specialize in that field of medicine.

RE: Q
Steve is still Q1, Taint 0.

RE: Mike
He's with us, and a member, but he isn't a PC.

RE: Temporal Manipulators
Good to know.

Hey Mr. Fox, can Ulric find a Temporal Manipulator to help him our, or is he just going to be an old man? He would be 105 by the year 2000.

Otherwise, he is Q:4 and taint 2 and not going anywhere.

Barely married and already a widow... or almost? +weep+

Were did the years go? All FIFTY of those years .

Joani, all our spouses die eventually. Omar is a widower himself. His wife died at 75 in 1984.

Omar's is Q-6. He is also Taint 5.

Andrew is also probably Q-6. My guess, is his taint is >5.

Am I reading something between the lines here?

Ulric, given your charisma, you might just be able to talk the Temporal manip into doing one little job.

And yes, Michael is part of the Cabal, but he is not a PC and will not be going with you when you eventually leave the timeline.

Sweet Jesus! And Mastery in what???

I was thinking about sizemorph mastery the other day. That would make one about a Mile tall and Im guessing the ST would have to take the cap off of Mega Str to allow it to go to 10 for such purposes. But I digress...

Cody has to wait at least 2 chapters until the cure for taint comes around (as per convo with Fox) as well as saving xp for that moment. After that I will be able to buy up my Q from 3 to 6 and look into Mastery. It will be a special moment when Cody can look y'all in the eyes and gets his voice back. :sniff:

Mastery? Nah... He has Claws with Kinetic Discharge, Range, Explosive, AP and Burning.

Just kidding.

You will have to wait and see.

armor? That would explain how not even ol Pax could crack his nuts...

Novas out of the box with no mega-stamina or adaptability have a life span of 150+

So basically you can half your age for what effectly you'd be, so in 2000 you'd be 52 or so in baseline years. Assuming you have a Stamina of 5 you're still pretty good.

Of course halving our age front loads the benifits, you erupt at 20 and get to stay effectively 20 till you're 42, or you erupt at age 40 and stay 40 till you're 82, but I think it's pretty good and fair as a first approximation.

And then we also have the big rule breaker in there, i.e. eruption. If you erupt at the age of 72 and roll your clock back to 22, then IMHO rolls the clock back.

Pretty soon now I'm going to have to buy "Ageless" or something as a Mega-Stamina enhancement (ST willing of course). Hmm... if I'd been thinking I probably would have done that rather than get a second dot of Mega-Stamina.

...still time to change.. I have a mod for mine too...

And Happy Birthday btw Courier! Everyone sing along!

HBD2U!
HBD2U!
HBD*Steve Courier...

HBD2UUUUUUUUUU!!!!!

Happy Birthday ...

Happy Birthday

The book says of Adaptability and age: "Moreover, the character's lifespan is increased by centuries, if not more."

Combined with M-Stam 2, it could be assumed that Omar has an effective lifespan of 350-800 years. If the 'more' is interpreted as millenia, then the number of years could stretch into the thousands. Of course, that is up to the ST to make that determination.

Thank you.

At the moment Steve is working under the assumption that he simply doesn't age... but mechanically at best all I've able to do is extend his lifespan faster than the game has aged him. Of course abby being what it is, core beliefs can become real.

Hmm... crunching the numbers, we've been here 80 years or so. That's like 10% of our lifespan (assuming M-Stam + Adapt = 800), or in human years it'd be 7.5 (assuming 75 year lifespan). With the previously mentioned front loading this math implies, i.e. Steve doesn't look like a 8 year old, he won't be showing much age for a while.

All the same I'm real happy to introduce Amber as a backup plan. Or we could just fix Lorean and go visit 2008 and find a nova willing to make us younger for money (harder than it sounds, but doable).

Nice new Avvie Ziggy! ^_^ Is that a flash new anima banner you're sporting???

Thank you.

I wish I could get rid of that white background though. For some of the other avvies I have made, the white background was not there. I don't understand what I did differently.

I fixed it...now I just have to remember what I did.

Andrew is Q5 T5 (up from T2)

I would have had to push hard and skimp on other parts of the character to pull Q6 and it wasn't justifiable at the moment anyways. Andrew's powers are all Level 3 save for a couple of body mods (which are fairly old) and his Megas. So he gets expensive.

It's going to take me three more experience drops to get to Nova Med 5 and develop the cure for Taint. I was under the impression I would get there first but I don't knwo what Cody has been discussing with Fox so who knows.

Andrew is tracking towards Q6 though. Just a matter of saving up the Experience (or getting more novas to spend)

Actually Andrew wasn't elligible for Q6 as Fox said we needed to be at 5 dots in one power and 3 in another. Andrew only had the one power (shapeshift) until I purchased Homunculus just now.

I knew there was a reason I didn't push myself to Q6 (aside from the extra 2 taint and 2 aberrations I would have accrued)

Just to clarify, it will be at least 2 xp drops, maybe more. If you guys do as much in the next chapters as you did in this one it will only be 2 chapters. Basically, I don't want the cure coming too quickly so I am limiting how many dots Andrew can buy per chapter.

forgot about the 5 dpots in a power thing. So it's going to take me awhile or some NP drops before I will get there...but the journey is what its all about, or in this case the March!