Build me a power

[Peregrine]

Here's the SFX:

 

Yet in some respects, the other totally classified addition to her pharmacope was almost more disturbing than the suicide package. Not because of the threat it represented, but because of the temptation it offered. When they'd first explained the effects of the drug the Cadre called "the tick," she hadn't fully grasped everything that explanation implied. In fact, she doubted that she fully appreciated all of the tick's ramifications even now, but she could certainly understand why the drug—it was actually half a dozen differentdrugs, all working together in minute, individually designed dosages for each drop commando's specific physiology—was on the Official Secrets List.

[/url]Now she looked back at Dr. Hyde, smiling slightly at his expression of exaggerated patience, and cautiously initiated the proper pharmacope command sequence.

Nothing at all seemed to happen for a moment. And then, so quickly and smoothly the transition appeared almost instantaneous, the universe about her abruptly slowed down.

Alicia sat very still in the chair in front of Hyde's desk, watching him, and her augmented vision zoomed in on his carotid artery. She watched it pulsing ever so slightly to the beat of his heart, and she counted his pulse rate. She had plenty of time for counting, because that was what "the tick" did. It bought the person using it the most precious combat commodity there was—time.

The tick enhanced Alicia's physical reaction speed only slightly. She moved a bit faster, a little more quickly, but it didn't magically allow her to move at superhuman rates, or let her snatch speeding bullets out of the air with her bare hand. What it did do was to accelerate her mental processes enormously. She might not have superhuman reaction speed, but she had all the time in the world to think about possibilities and threats, about actions and reactions, before she actually took them.

She turned her head—slowly, so slowly it seemed—looking around Dr. Hyde's office through the crystal-clear armorplast of the tick's syrupy time stream. It seemed to her as if it took at least a full minute to turn her head all the way to the right, but she knew better. She'd seen holovids of people riding the tick. Indeed, she'd seen holovids of herself moving under its influence. She'd seen the way that heads turned and limbs moved in a fashion which defied easy description but which could never be mistaken for anything else by anyone who had ever seen it.

Dr. Maxwell Hyde certainly recognized it, and he didn't need his diagnostics, either. He saw the absolutely smooth, almost mechanical, way her head turned. It swivelled, with the micrometrically metered precision of a computer-controlled gun turret, snapping to the exact angle she'd chosen in a movement which amalgamated viperish speed and something very like . . . serenity.

Over the years, Hyde had tried repeatedly to find the right way to describe the tick to himself or to his colleagues. He'd never been truly satisfied with his efforts, but the best analogy he'd been able to come up with was actually the first one which had ever suggested itself to him. It was like watching a slow-motion holovid of a striking rattlesnake or cobra in real-time, contradictory though that sounded.

Now he closed his eyes, concentrating on his diagnostics. DeVries was doing well, he thought. Mastering the complexities of the Cadre augmentation package was the real make-or-break point for any potential drop commando. All the motivation, determination, and basic abilities in the universe couldn't make anyone a drop commando if they couldn't handle the sensory augmentation, the multiple synth-links, and the tick. The rest of the training, the other aspects of the augmentation package itself, were all frosting on the cake, in Maxwell Hyde's opinion, and he was pleased by DeVries' tolerance for the tick. There was no sign of any of the toxicity reactions they very occasionally encountered. And, perhaps even more importantly, there were no indications of any tendency towards dependency on her part.

"Let's take it through an alpha sequence," he said now, never opening his eyes as he "watched" her.

"All right," Alicia agreed, deliberately slowing her enunciation to something approximating the doctor's slow, dragging speech, and stood.

She was more cautious about it than she'd been the first time. Despite all the warnings, all the effort Dr. Hyde and his staff had put into explaining to her what was going to happen, she hadn't really been prepared for the actuality of the tick that first day. She'd been sitting down that day, too, and she'd stood up at their request, exactly the same way she'd done it all her life. Except that this time, what should have brought her smoothly and naturally to her feet had turned into an explosive leap. One which had carried her forward, actually overbalanced her. She'd almost fallen—had, in fact, started to topple forward—and she'd flailed her arms for balance.

To her tick-enhanced time sense, her arms had seemed to move with almost grotesque, floating slowness. They'd trailed behind her mental commands, lagged on their way to their intended destinations. And despite that, they'd shot past where she'd meant to stop them, traveling with a speed and quickness she'd never before managed.

She'd learned to adjust, eventually, and now, as Dr. Hyde had requested, she moved away from her chair and fell into a "rest" position in the center of his spacious office. She stood that way for a moment, hands at her sides, and then fell into a guard position.

Alicia had grown to love espada del mano, the Corps' chosen hand-to-hand combat technique. Espada del mano had been developed about two hundred years before in the Granada System, and it was a primarily "hard" style which emphasized weaponless techniques and a go-for-broke aggressiveness. It did include some weaponed techniques, especially with edged steel (and its higher-tech equivalents), and it wasn't something a modern Marine actually required all that often. But the need still arose occasionally, and the Corps was right about the way in which it combined physical conditioning, mental discipline, and the "warrior mentality." Besides, the sheer exuberance of a one-on-one, full-contact training bout was hard to beat.

The Cadre, unlike the Marines, preferred deillseag òrd, also known as "the slap hammer." Despite its name, deillseag òrd was actually a "softer" style than espada del mano. Or probably it would be more accurate to say that it was a more . . . balanced, comprehensive style. Deillseag òrd had been developed in the New Dublin System, and it was a synthesis of at least two or three dozen other martial arts. It included a much broader spectrum of weaponed techniques than the espada did, and it also included quite a lot more "soft style" elements.

Alicia had only begun to explore deillseag òrd, and the time she'd been stuck in the hospital hadn't left her much opportunity for training in it. She suspected that she was going to prefer it, once she'd had the opportunity to begin mastering it, but for now, it was better to stick to what she knew, and she began an espada training ejercicio, bringing herself totally to bear on the focus it required.

Hyde opened his eyes again. He continued "watching" her through his synth-link, but this was something he never tired of seeing with his own eyes. Something he'd always deeply treasured about his own period of active duty with the Cadre.

Alicia DeVries was the personification of the old cliché "poetry in motion," he thought. She moved with blinding speed, yet at the same time every motion seemed floating, almost slow. It was the perfection of each individual move, he told himself. The fact that there was literally no hesitation, no uncertainty. DeVries' total familiarity with the ejercicio was obvious, but there was more to what she was doing than practice. More even than the drilled-in muscle memory of the true martial artist. Every move she made, every shift of balance, was deliberate and conscious. Even as her hands flickered and flashed, she was thinking through each movement. Every single one of them was textbook perfect because, thanks to the tick, she had time to make them that way.

He remembered doing that himself. He suspected, if he was going to be honest, that he'd never been as good, even with the tick, as she was. The tick enhanced its users' natural aptitudes and talents. It didn't magically bestow the same plateau of ability—of speed, reflexes, balance—on all of them, and her starting point was simply better than his had been. And she was adjusting to the tick's vagaries faster than he had, too, he decided.

Well, fair's fair. She may be settling down to Old Speedy faster than I did, but I bounced back from the surgery a lot faster than she did.

He let her continue for another two or three minutes, which he knew seemed far longer than that to her, then nodded.

"All right, Alley. I think we've got all the data we need."

"Sure," she said with the odd tone everyone who spent any time working with drop commandos came to recognize. It was obvious that she thought she was speaking very slowly, enunciating her words carefully. For those stuck in a non-tick time stream, though, those words still came out quick, clipped—completely clear and unslurred, yet so fast that it sounded as if they ought to be garbled.

She floated back across the floor on those tick-inspired dancer's feet and settled gracefully, gracefully back into her chair with a smile.

 

As I read it, it's not simply increased SPD or DEX, because the character isn't moving faster, she's just thinking faster. There could be a DEX effect though, as she can literally think through her physical actions without losing any physical reaction time.

 

Also, later in the book, there is a description of a platoon-level operation of folks using the Tick. They could communicate with each other, make and change tactical plans, etc. at the accelerated rate as well.

[Tarek]

Re: Build me a power

 

This one's easy.

 

Combat Skill Levels + Overall Skill Levels for non-combat skills. The other effects, being able to think faster, is simulated by the metagame mechanic of letting the players take as long as they'd like in order to think over their next action, and coordinate by just plain talking to each other over the gaming table.

[SteelDoom]

Re: Build me a power

 

How about using the Time Scale for all actions. So for a half phase action, they can take say 5 minutes with the appropriate bonus. I'm not sure how you'd "game mechanic" that though except as Tarek posted.

 

A cool drug though... very cool.

[Tarek]

Re: Build me a power

 

There's another 'drug' like this in Steve Perry's books.

 

First seen in the book, The Man Who Never Missed, which established the Matador universe, there's both a combat drug that increases neurological response time for a short period and a longer term version based on bacterial augmentation of some unexplained kind.

 

It effectively increases nerve signal speed and reaction time for the 'fast-twitch' muscle fibers, meaning you think faster, react faster, move faster, and perceive everything in the world around you being slower. I'd buy that as extra SPD, DEX, and combat skill levels. It doesn't help much with mental skills though.

[Ganesh]

Re: Build me a power

 

It does sound mostly like a bonus to skill levels, with a noticable but not overwhelming increase in Speed. One might consider throwing in some penalty skill levels, either generalized (you have time to think and account for all additional factors, so take no penalties for them) or specifically to remove penalties due to rushing actions.

 

That is, of course, after you've gotten used to the drug. An untrained person is likely to fall on their face when attempting to use physical skills, given their differences in reaction speed. That could be a simple as requiring dex rolls for even the simplest actions, penalized by 1/10th the active points of 'tick' in the person's system.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Build me a power

 

+1 SPD

+3 DEX

Rapid Sense for Sight Group

+5 PER for Sight Group

+1 Overall Skill Level

+1 All Combat Skill Level

 

are some things I would think to make Tick do offhand from that snippet.

[Peregrine]

Re: Build me a power

 

+1 SPD

+3 DEX

Rapid Sense for Sight Group

+5 PER for Sight Group

+1 Overall Skill Level

+1 All Combat Skill Level

 

are some things I would think to make Tick do offhand from that snippet.

 

Only sight and not the other senses? Remember, the team could communicate verbally at the accelerated rate.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Build me a power

 

Only sight and not the other senses? Remember' date=' the team could communicate verbally at the accelerated rate.[/quote']

In Hero Siluquey is an Action That Takes No Time (can be done anytime, even when it's not your phase), I would simply make that a Role-Playing SFX of the power.