Andrew's analysis of the chemical structure and Lorean's own data made it clear that the Utopia drugs had a secondary active agent/ingredient. At this time Andrew has no information regarding what the agent does though it appears to be the same in both the painkiller and the power supression drug.

Mind you Andrew right now has no knowlegde of Utopia, and he's assuming that the extra is either:

A) A by-product, contaminant, or degradation product
B) An "assist" molecule which helps the primary drug to work to its maximum result, kind of like a catalyst.

He's going to the group with his findings as both due diligence as well as information gathering, it's possible that one of the other novas might know that Utopia uses 2-part drugs, or has issues with product purity or stability.

I'd also gather that Fox is unconcerned about the overall meta plot given that we are removed from the "Aberrant" timeline

What chemical structure? To my knowlege none of us have samples of the drugs. That means you are working off of... what?

Public information on the drug's chemical structure? That's what you'd need to recreate the drug (although this might be a process involving hundreds of man hours of work, even if you have a flow char listing the chemical steps... which is reasonable considering it's probably public info). But public documents listing the chemical structures of PU's drugs aren't going to list the chemical structure of the sterilization agent.

Did Lorean scan samples of the drugs while we were on that timeline? Does this mean that she has scans of the chemistry of every single object on the timeline, including people?

Did Lorean's wholesale theft of every database she could get her hands on include Project Proteus? I don't have a problem with this... but even they won't have a detailing of "unknown" substances in the drugs. Project Pro's computers would simply have a structure of the sterilization agent.

Agreed. And I assume we're going to find out about when we start doing some time traveling looking into nova medical issues.

Lorean appears to have some information regarding the chemical structure of the drug and some level of analytical data. Where that comes from I dunno but the data also included another similar drug that was produced by another company for a short time.

Given the amount of money you all poured into getting the ship equipped I'm running with the assumption that Andrew has what he needs to do advanced chemical synthesis and purification until I hear otherwise from Fox.

I think that's reasonable. We were already headed down that road with the glassware shop even before Andrew hooked up with us. On a side note glass blowing is often a skill that Chemistry types have, although it's probably more Engineering than Science.

Then we were getting input from the crew/NPCs for what would be nice for the ship/shops. As Andrew obviously made the final cut he'd have a goodly amount of input into setting this up (which is only fair since he'd likely be the one using it).

still, I find it difficult to believe that anyone with a good understanding of chemistry would be able to find it. It was my understanding that Utopia somehow his the chemical instruction for the novas immune system within the drug where it could not be located separately. It was my understanding that it wasn't a second separate compound.

Otherwise there is *no way* the conspiracy could remain hidden for so long. There are LOTS of chemists in the world...

I agree, but he's not claiming he's found it. To find it you'd have to have a sample of the corrupted drug. Worse, one guy with baseline level skills, working in a lab that was built with a $20 million dollar budget based off of a world that never saw novas... well... it'd be really hard.

As near as I can tell he's claiming it's public knowlege from some of the stuff that Lorean has.

The drugs that PU uses, for that matter all drugs that anyone uses, have chemical formulas that are public knowlege. Even how to make them is public knowlege.

Thus it's possible to take the formula for Andies, combined with the cookbook instructions, and at least in theory whip up a batch. A 5 dot chemist would certainly know where to look up that kind of data, for example; The CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, the patent office's data, and some medical text books would be good places to start.

Basically yes, I got a PM that said that Andrew found x, y, and z information. I used that and relayed that back to the group as I think Andrew would.

As a player I'm actually least familiar with the Aberrant cannon, I had forgotten about the sterility mix until it was first mentioned.

As far as Andrew knows... well he's never even heard of PU let alone the rumors of a sterility cocktail. He's simply relaying that his analysis plus Lorean's info points to a secondary effect from a component drug within the main formula, while he has no idea what that effect is he has no reason to assume it's intent is anything but benign, he just won't administer something without knowing it's effect, much like any good scientist.

Interesting...

So either Lorean analyzed it herself, or she stole that analysis from someone else (Teragen would be a good guess, but Project Pro, the Directive, or even Aberrants being also rans).

Or perhaps our (assumed but not proven) puppeteers are playing with us.

Keep in mind that your timeline is 2007. It is massively unlikely that anyone has heard rumors of the sterility coctail. Lorean has two versions of the drugs from her theft of databases. All that Andrew has discovered is that the two different versions are different, and that the Utopia's has an additive. It will take him time to research the drugs and figure out what the additive does.

Also, Steve and Cody, would you guys have taken the drugs after your eruption? The other guys didn't because they were somewhat in hiding and never went to a Rashoud facility. You two would be the only ones that could take the 'clean' drugs and tell a difference.

The point I was arguing is that the sterilty effect is *not* an additive...it is a property of the chemical structure that ONLY effects Novas...its more like a secondary function than a separate chemical. And it took Mega-Ints to make it...


As for Cody having gone to a Rashoud facilitiy? At first i wanted to say yes given that his eruption was brutal and public and he would have been taken in if they could. However I just remembered that in my own backstory i have him going underground since the authorities and the Directive didnt realize he was being controlled before erutping. So he was a fugitive for awhile. So I either say no or a make a slight alteration to his backstory (which I am considering...)

Up to you. There's no reason that you should have gone to the Rashoud facility.

As for the drug, I'm just giving you guys some plot threads to pursue along the way, or in the future in this case.

OOC knowledge: The way I am handling the drugs is that the extra chemical structure of the drugs has two functions, it makes the drugs work more effectively on nova physiology, and the secret property, it sterilizes novas. I'm not a chemist, so if there are inconsistencies with the way it should work, you'll have to take that with a grain of salt.

The other issue is that Lorean is a pretty major plot device, and the biggest problem I have is not going too far with it. Star Trek had a whole team of writers and techies trying to maintain internal consistency with the science of their stories, I just have me. Lorean is capable of scanning communications and communication networks, on the timelines she visits. As such, she has the sum total of all the worlds medical knowledge in her databanks. Kind of like being able to download the entire library of congress onto your home pc. Even if you could do it, that wouldn't make you a sudden expert in all the information that your pc contained. Lorean has all that knowledge, but she doesn't necessarily know what to do with it, or even know what is useful or not.
You guys asked about nova drugs, so she presented Andrew with what knowledge she found in memory which contained two different version of the nova specific drugs. She can see (and Andrew) from the data that they are different, and that the Utopia one has more to it than the non-Utopia version. Neither of them has a clue at this point what those differences mean.

I would have gone to a clinic, Cody probably was in hiding. However being in hiding doesn't mean he can't take the drugs.

More than likely most or all public novas have been exposed... assuming there's more to the consperacy than just the clinics, and if it's just the clinics the whole thing falls apart in a year or two.

From my understanding of reading the books, they made the drugs freely available to new novas. Also, there was not even a hint of the sterility conspiracy until after Sliders death in like 2008, and even then only a bare handful of poeple had the clue.

Exactly my point. Without some kind of back up plan to sterilize the novas who didn't take the clinic drugs, the whole thing falls apart pretty quickly.

Assume the drugs came out in 2000. So Sterility is only a problem for novas who erupted in 2000 or later, and who went to Western clinics? Not to be racist about it, but isn't someone going to notice that most or all of babies born to novas don't have white skin?

Cannon kind of fails us here. It's cannon that:
A) The drugs were in the clinics
B) The conspiracy went for years without being uncovered.
But fact "B" implies that fact "A" was only the beginning.

If I were the head of Project Pro, I'd take advantage of the obvious and easy ways to give the drugs to more novas. DeVries' medical program was created by stealing PU employees, so I'd put an agent or three there. Andy's bar has "Amp-Wells", i.e. a drug that's probably created by combining alcohol and one of PU's drugs. I'd put the sterility drug in there too.

I'd also confuse the issue by releasing disinformation, i.e. stories of T2M members having love childen, etc.

Yeah, I agree about the cannon not having enough material to adquately explain it all. I wouldn't put it past Project Proteus to occasionally spike city water supplies around the world, just to be safe, or include it in common food additives. No doubt they would do anything they could get away with to insure there was only one generation of novas.

Don't forget Star-Lords coffe!

Things have been curiously quiet lately...

For my part Im not really sure I have anyhting to add at the current moment in game. Ive tried to think of something to post and its just not coming to me at the moment. Any ideas would be helpful or maybe its just time for a fast-forward...

I'll update either tonight or tomorrow. I've been house hunting this weekend, hard to get my brain wrapped around anything else. Andrew (dr. bradford) is out of town.

Some things that would be helpful to me is a good idea of exactly where you guys want to go next. I know you want to go to the future and find some weapons but a more specific description of the kind of timeline you are looking for would be good.

Steve here:

In order to gather weapons we need to know what is available and what would be useful. To the best of my knowledge those kinds of military choices haven't been made/developed yet. I suspect we're looking for either beam weapons or missiles, but that's really a choice that should be made by experts. I don't want to go looking for the sharpest spear when guns are about to be invented.

The plan is too ask Lorean how far she can be from the Earth and still gather information. Even if it's only the orbit of Saturn, that would be fine. Then we move to that distance outside the plane of the solar system, and start moving forward in time. Say... 20 years forward on the nova branch and/or 50 years forward on the non-nova branch. Then we scan the place, then we flee back to that deserted timeline too evaluate it.

This should find out a great deal rather quickly, medical advances for novas, weapons, etc.

Something else we need to do is talk to the crew about the do's and don't's for self eruption. I might just post a "Top 10 reasons for not trying to harm yourself in eruption", and/or we could actually hold that meeting and take questions.

We should try and find out more about the aliens and their ships weapons and systems. They are the big potential threat we may encounter. Also, so long as we are going with a Star trekish theme, it would be cool to pull a Voyager and customize and trick out Lorean with all the cool tech we come across, making it a unique defender of humanity across time and space...or we may get sidetracked by the aberrant war, who knows? We should definitely get her outfitted with her own Mass Drivers, for dealing with the asteroids.

Sure, but what does the technology "mass drivers" imply? Would someone who had that also have other things? Putting a few more data points on our tech chart would be a good thing.

Well I'm back, looks like we're a bit stalled. I'll read up and try to post something. I'd say that right now our best guess will be to travel to the future and just see what we can see ... we can worry about buying weapons and stuff once we know what there is to buy.

Well "Mass Drivers" is a term for using asteriods as projectiles. Great against planets and things that can't dodge. Simply find a stellar body that is traveling as thousands of mile an hour relative to your target and nudge it in the right direction. Results = big badda boom!

If you are planning to fight other ships you would need conventional energy weapons or missles or other normal stuff.

Lorean has beam weapons, but they are quantum based and not terribly powerful yet. As you guys grow and gain xp, so will she and she will grow along with you. However, just like your characters you need to choose wisely what she will spend her xp on. If you want her to develop more powerful weapons she will focus on that at the cost of increasing her quantum or developing stealth, etc. (She cannot buy things tainted.) Also, keep in mind that her powers are a level of magnitude more powerful than an average nova's. Her q-bolt is meant to damage ships as opposed to people.

Increasing Quantum? She can do that?

And I suspect we're better off with Stealth than Weapons...

All depends on what our long term goals are, if we want to take on these aliens we might need the firepower more than the stealth. That said I think that the do tend to be mutually exclusive, either we'll get stealth capacity against anything or on the flip side we'll get weapons and shield that will negate the need for stealth.

Given the novas in the group have a good mix of offensive and survival based powers I think we can go the stealth route and act as special forces commandos against our enemies. Which of course is more fun anyways ...

Stealth is better because we need to hide the ship against government's and powerful novas from noticing us. Some of those things we simply aren't going to defeat, and worse, we don't want to fight them in the first place.

Pretty much how I was thinking. Besides we have a warper and we can handle small scale things ourselves pretty well. At some point it'd be nice to get out of the ship and do some real adventuring.

Ironically I find that our informations gathering excercise is guiding us down a path I suspect is similar to the Watchers ....

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

For all intents and purposes, Lorean is an artifical nova. Many of her abilities are based on quantum. Her ability to reconfigure for instance is Shapeshift, her propulsion is Fly with hyperspeed, etc. She does have conventional engines as well, but they are rarely used and mostly for emergencies or incase for some reason she were to run out of quantum and still need to manuver. Her nova 'powers' are of a magnitude greater than a regular nova given their need to affect so much more mass. They are also in someways limited by her artifical nature. Having said all this, keep in mind that I reserve the right to not allow her to gain certain powers that might negatively effect the game, or to give her certain powers that are needed for plot purposes, ie time/cross-time travel that would otherwise be way out of possibility.

You guys seem like mature gamers so I really don't need to say this, but just for the record...
Lorean is a massive plot device that enables you guys to basically fullfil every desire. That doesn't make for a very good story though. Any timeline you guys go to there will be conflict that will arise for you to either deal with or choose not to deal with. I'll try to keep things interesting for you as best I can, but it is also up to you guys not to reach so far that you leave your characters with nothing left to strive for. Theoretically you guys could travel timelines and ferret out every secret in the Aeoniverse that is part of cannon. You've already figured out the sterility conspiracy, or at least the fact of it if not the why. I guess what I'm saying is be careful not to solve all mystries with the magic wand of Lorean or the game will quickly lose interest.

I'll try to post everyday, but I now have a job with some pretty hefty hours, so it may not be possible. Anyways, I'm off to work. Will try to post tonight.

Time to get our hands dirty, we're relying on the Lorean plot device too much IMO

As for going after the watchers ... I agree we need more time to hone our skills, but we can't progress if we don't act, I doubt we'll gain much exp if we let Lorean do all our work for us.

Very true. Besides getting your hands dirty is much more fun.

I just want to say that Cody is wary of taking on Project Proteus because of his survivor nature. His player on the other hand welcomes such reckless adventure! But you are going to have to convince him we have a good plan and clear objectives. Try harder!!! :-P