WWYCD: Stark Contrast

[SKJAM!]

Recently your character encountered a powerful being called the Manichean. It pulled the old stunt of putting two people the character cares about in mortal peril, then asking him/her/it to choose one to save. Naturally, your character wasn't going to fall for a false dilemma, and managed to find a way to save both and defeat the Manichean. Angered, the Manichean swore the character would "soon see things my way."

 

Now, your character notices that all the color is fading from the surroundings, and the "contrast" is being pumped up. Soon, the character can see only black and white. No shades of grey, just stark black and white. A call to the prison reveals that the Manichean has disappeared.

 

What would your character do? (Blind characters are excused from this for obvious reasons.)

[boomer]

Re: WWYCD: Stark Contrast

 

Depends on which of my characters.....Siphon my strength draining speedster would catch up to him and drain small bits of strength until he fixed the issue.....Granite (who was changed to living rock by messing with Steroids...) would just assume it was more bad luck and a further transformation.....Heavy Metal, my Mutant master of Sound would play Mr. Manichean a "private concert" until he fixed things......my namesake Boomer the Confederation Marine/Initiate Clansmen would take him prisoner and introduce him to interrogation Marine style.....

[nexus]

Re: WWYCD: Stark Contrast

 

Hm, most of the characters would react in about the same fashion, attempt to track the Manchiean down and impresss upon him the need to reverse to what's he's done with varying levels of force depending on character.

[SKJAM!]

Re: WWYCD: Stark Contrast

 

Depends on which of my characters.....Siphon my strength draining speedster would catch up to him and drain small bits of strength until he fixed the issue.....Granite (who was changed to living rock by messing with Steroids...) would just assume it was more bad luck and a further transformation.....Heavy Metal' date=' my Mutant master of Sound would play Mr. Manichean a "private concert" until he fixed things......my namesake Boomer the Confederation Marine/Initiate Clansmen would take him prisoner and introduce him to interrogation Marine style.....[/quote']

 

Hmm...I'm interested in how your characters would find the Manichean, especially given the new handicap.

[nexus]

Re: WWYCD: Stark Contrast

 

The characters can still, right, just everything is complerely devoid of color or grays, like unshaded pencil sketch?

[SKJAM!]

Re: WWYCD: Stark Contrast

 

The characters can still' date=' right, just everything is complerely devoid of color or grays, like unshaded pencil sketch?[/quote']

 

Correct. Subtle distinctions of shade or tone are gone. I imagine driving or otherwise traveling at great speed would be difficult until the character learns to compensate for the missing visual clues.

[McCoy]

Re: WWYCD: Stark Contrast

 

Snow Leopard Being Sabertooth's granddaughter, color blindness runs in the family, but rarely affects females. Suspects that as her healing factor is not correcting for this it is not a normal type of colorblindness. Tours his former cell, usual haunts, tries to pick up his scent, literally.

 

Millennium suspects the color-blindness is metaphorical, and that his perceptions of right and wrong are being manipulated to eliminate "shades of grey." Will consult with another telepath to confirm or deny.

 

Iron Will Among other health problems he's suppost to pay attention to color blindness? Puts Manichean on ignore list.

 

Cheetah As a Speedster, needs to process visual info rapidly, color, shading helps. Check underworld contacts to find Manichean.

 

Dolphin Waits. Manichean has done this to make him "see it his way," he will show up to justify his action. Lets Manichean come to him.

[Stormraven]

Re: WWYCD: Stark Contrast

 

Checkmate - being a world-class detective, would find him. Of course, I'm not sure that Checkmate would come into being hunted in the first place, since he can be pretty black-and-white as it is... But if he were, the colour differential would disorient him briefly, until he figured out a way to compensate. He would find Manichaen and teach him that imposing one's views on others, however right you think you are, is very definitely 'bad', with no shades of gray.

 

(Would he find a way to compensate? He's got a 38 Int, Invention, and about 6 scientific PhDs... I think he would.)

[boomer]

Re: WWYCD: Stark Contrast

 

Hmm...I'm interested in how your characters would find the Manichean' date=' especially given the new handicap.[/quote']

 

Siphon would have his Teammates, The San Francisco Bay Guardians help him track him down. Granite wouldn't care like I said...he'd think it was a further condition of his changing into living granite. Boomer would have Colonel Max Draygun and a Battalion of Minarans (big lizard men) track him down...just for fun.......Heavy Metal my Mutant master of sound would track him by his heartbeat....having memorized it from a previous encounter with him.

[Arac-4105]

Re: WWYCD: Stark Contrast

 

Arac would be traumatised, as he gets around by swinging and the loss of that much visual information would potentially be deadly to him. (think about trying to web-swing around a world that looked like Sin City drawings). He'd have to rely on others to track down the Manichean.

 

Mythic, a magic-user, would try designing a spell to act as a 'filter' for his perceptions, changing some vital info into cross-hatching or shading that works with black 'n white. Then he'd track down the Manichean and hit him with the same spell, naively trying to help this guy out of his madness.

[nexus]

Re: WWYCD: Stark Contrast

 

Tao has a mental map of the city perfectly storted (Has Total Recall) and exceptional abilites at computing position, range, etc and notices details quicky and easily (Per bonsues, Absolute Range Sense, spatial awaress, etc) so she could probably navigate fairly well once she adapted to the condition

 

Velocity would be more hampered by the lack of some depth perception cues, but does perceive the world as moving in slow motion when she activates her powers so could move, likely not as fast as she normally does, not without practice at least.

 

Ivy would have to rely on her connection to the Green and use its "senses" to find him and/or help from her team.

[Zed-F]

Re: WWYCD: Stark Contrast

 

Soulbarb gets annoyed. She checks her Soulsight to see whether that's still working properly (which it might well be, given that it also operates on a metaphysical level.) If so, she'll have to practice moving about with it active all the time, which she normally doesn't do, in order to be able to recognize people and find Manichean. That in and of itself could have some interesting side effects, as she may learn more about various chance people she encounters than she might otherwise. If even her Soulsight's not working properly... could be time to consult Camuranima, the source of her demonic powers, to see if he knows the nature of the interference.

 

Cerulean has a much easier time of it. He shifts his magic VPP until he finds an appropriate spell to counteract the Manichean's machinations. From there, he and the remainder of the Sentries proceed to put him back in containment where he belongs.

[Brandi]

Re: WWYCD: Stark Contrast

 

Irving's already got achromatic color blindness, so he wouldn't be losing *quite* as much information as most, but it would annoy him and he'd probably seek out the help of his teammates pretty quickly.

 

My husband's character Elizabeth-- who I think I've mentioned here-- sees the entire EM spectrum, so it would depend on how the effect manifested: if the non-visual spectra still showed up, giving the effect of Gibson's opening line of Neuromancer ("the color of television tuned to a dead channel") she'd be infuriated and probably track the guy down to pummel him.

 

If it really did reduce the visual information to a black-and-white line effect, she'd probably find the relative quiet relaxing for a while-- and then track the guy down and pummel him for dicking around with her.

[Badger]

Re: WWYCD: Stark Contrast

 

Dammit, Badger has Enhanced vision, too.

 

Hmm, well Badger would be disoriented at first. But he also has enhanced hearing to rely upon. He also can "sense" life energy to some degree. And since he would have had contact with Manichean before and I am assuming he has a decent level of power and likely wouldnt be hiding it he can track him down that way though maybe slower going. If he is hiding his power/cant find his power/didnt remember it from previous adventure it will be harder to find. He might do what one mentioned earlier and wait for the guy to come to him. In any case he will be in a foul mood by the time he find the Manichean and if his teammates arent around to keep him in check. Might beat Manichean senseless like a wailing red-headed stepchild in a Wal-Mart parking lot.

[SKJAM!]

Re: WWYCD: Stark Contrast

 

Unusual sight-based senses work normally if the character can switch to them, as opposed to having them always on. So Elizabeth would be fully affected, but someone who swaps out normal sight for "soulsight" will be able to bypass the "black and white only" effect. However, using IR goggles or the like won't help, as the effect will prevent the character's eyes from interpreting the data correctly.

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: WWYCD: Stark Contrast

 

Blackcat - Unless the problem were Deus Ex Machina - her ch'i pool allows her to to any kind of self healing/regeneration ect - she can use it to heal from flashes or transformation attacks, so she would just heal herself, and go find him. Then maybe heal him. Then have a long philsophical talk about black and white literally as opposed to as a philosphic view.

 

Ballsitic would find a teammate who would heal him or talk to his teacher in the mystic arts, then go look for him. And then beat the crap out of him. Ballistic doesn't like people messing with his senses.

 

Yeah those two are just a bit on the powerful side - Cat's at 830 and Ballstic is around 750. Sometimes makes it hard to use those two in the WWYCD threads.

 

Meeb would be all weirded out. His sensory appuratus is not ocular based, but reading parts of the electromagnetic spectrim through his skin. He probably would think he's going back to his injured state that he just came out of, and not do much about it. Once he releases that this isn't the case, he'd seek help.

 

Sift would rely on her "trusight" spell, and find a cure. Then find the guy again.

[Terrapin]

Re: WWYCD: Stark Contrast

 

Sun Walker has a Public ID, so he could seek medical/scientific/mystic help for his condition without jeopardizing his identity. Since his powers are all light-based, it's possible that they might also be altered by whatever the Manichean did to him - he'd be extremely hesitant to use them for fear of what might happen.

 

Witch Hazel is a high school student who has missed too much school time already due to superheroing; she'd have to get through classes and such without revealing her trouble, which would be worth a few laughs. She'd probably seek out help from her four great-aunts: Morgause, Rowena, Hecate and Sue, four dizzy old bats who know rather a lot about magic, if one has the patience to engage them in conversation long enough to get a useful answer out of them. They might not have the power to fix her, but might at least point her in the direction of the answer.

 

Orca can get by with Active Sonar until we find the Manichean. Being of mixed Human/Atlantean blood, he's got a built-in hostility towards those who insist on seeing everything as being either one or the other, having had to put up with a lot of it growing up. Angry speech bubbles will fly as fast as his fists.

 

Shasta would use her Plant Telepathy to help navigate until she can find the Manichean. Having been raised and educated by Luther Burbank, she would use agnostic-humanist ethical arguments, along with her mind-affecting Floral Pheromones, to help him appreciate relativism.

 

Renegade can't go to anyone for help and would have a rough time finding the Manichean by himself in the state he's in. This would be a huge character-development opportunity, as he would really need to trust his teammates enough to let them help him.