Wushu Skidoo
He tried to walk up to the soldiers, but the quad was surprisingly slippery. Friction wasn't going to help him steer at these speeds, apparently. He slid right past his would-be captors and thumped into their jeep, crumpling the hood. Thinking quickly (no telling how long he could keep this up), he leapt toward the Physics building, "landed" on the wall, then pushed off and flew in front of the soldiers. Each rifle bent in half as he grabbed it; the force probably broke a few trigger fingers, too.
Jasper snapped back into the local frame of reference as thunder pealed over the quad. Greg was screaming. Light poured from his eyes and mouth, tore through his skin. He had become Death...
This month's installment is a supplement to Destroyer of Worlds, in which I mixed atomic science and gnosticism to create a snappy little modern mythology. One of the scenarios involved a group of Richard Feynman's graduate students and, in retrospect, I thought they deserved some more focused attention... them and their wacky, physics-based powers.
The Path to Enlightenment
Here's a recap: During the Trinity test, Richard Feynman had an apocalyptic insight. He realized that the material world was created as a prison for The Destroyer, so that countless higher planes could come into being. Human consciousness is an expression of The Destroyer's attempts to break free. Any person who achieves true enlightenment would become The Destroyer and instantly annihilate all of Creation.
The path to enlightenment is long, however, and lined with shiny things. Feynman has vanished into the shadows (on a mission to decimate America's nuclear scientists) and now a group of his graduate students is following his post-Trinity work. They've begun to grasp the same metaphysical truths that have warped their professor's mind and unlocked his crazy powers. Mystics claim that such abilities are nothing but dangerous distractions. In this case, maybe that's for the best.
Feynman's students believe that they now comprehend physics on a transcendental level, but this is only partially the case. As He awakens, The Destroyer tests His prison by straining its rules. The tricks described below are the side-effects of His metaphysical thrashing.
Stupid Physics Tricks
(A quick aside: I am not a physicist, nor even a physics student, and this is not meant as a scientifically rigorous treatment of the topic. Should any of you readers want to run with the premise by adding more detail or inventing new powers, please do so in the comment thread. Grazzi.)
Objects in Motion - Get quick-and-dirty telekinesis by instantly changing the velocity of an object. No levitation, no gentle hovering or fine control, just straight-line motion in a single direction. When it hits something, it stops. Good for disarming bad guys or passing the salt.
Irresistible Force - Suspend Newton's Third Law and allow an object to continue moving no matter what force is applied against it. That includes gravity, brick walls, and (especially) human bodies. You have to touch the object as it moves, so this trick isn't usually performed on speeding bullets, but it can turn an Oldsmobile into a Sherman tank.
Immovable Object - Place an object at rest and no force can move it. Works on your own body, too, but it also causes blindness, deafness, and results in asphyxiation (because light and air cannot cause changes in your retinas, ears, or lung tissue). Best to use it for impenetrable barricades.
Hotter/Colder - Redistribute the heat in a system and dramatically increase its temperature in one, tiny spot. This decreases its temperature everywhere else, but not by as much. Makes it easy to start fires or melt holes in steel.
Entropy - Increasing the entropy in a system means increasing friction, which will cause most machines to seize up in a hurry. Doing it to a human means a quick and painful death. (Any of the Feynmen can kill with a thought. Killing is kid stuff. If your players aren't the type to feel morally or socially constrained from mass murder, this may not be the premise for you.)
Boom - Temporarily decrease the volume of a gas without increasing its temperature. Do this to enough gas, and you've got the makings of a tornado or a hurricane. Let it go, and you've got one hell of an explosion!
Induction - Create electrical currents and/or magnetic fields by redistributing the electrical charge within an air mass or metallic object. Fine control isn't in the cards, so you can put away the Magneto helmet, but lightning is certainly doable.
Unity of Opposites - Instantly equalize the electrical charge in a system to kill electronics, collapse a magnetic field, or break molecular bonds. Do the same on the atomic scale and you've got room-temperature fusion, but I wouldn't want to be in the room.
The Rainbow Effect - Another previous column posited an unseen world of dark matter that does not interact with the electromagnetic fields that define normal matter. Feynman's students could easily send themselves and others into this world... or bring its monstrous wildlife into ours.
Euclid, Meet Escher - Change the geometry of the gravitational field to walk on walls or send your enemies falling into the sky. (Yes, this is another excuse for cheap telekinesis.)
Annihilation - Convert matter directly into energy and direct its discharge. It's like a laser death ray that's powered by whatever you have in your pockets. (This is Feynman's trick from the previous article.)
Changing Frame - Think super-speed, but with more realistic physics. Going faster means you have more energy than the things around you. When you change your frame of reference, the rest of the world becomes slow, slippery, and fragile. You feel lighter, like you're walking on the moon. Objects fly away when you nudge them, walls crumble when you hit them, and people just fall to pieces.
Unlikely Heros
Grad students aren't your typical action game PCs. Making them good Wushu heros is all about motivation. I'd stat them out thusly:
- Enlightened Physics 3 - Anything related to physics or wacky powers derived therefrom.
- Dark Desire 4 - Something for which the character would kill, or at least cheat and steal.
- Noble Pursuit 5 - A selfless, possibly plot-related, goal. (Getting to the bottom of their mentor's disappearance might be a good one.)
This way, the PCs are tempted to misuse their new abilities, but they're only at their best when doing something good. Plus, it makes them effective in a fight, even without any actual fighting skills.
Pick Me Ups
One of Feynman nuclear mutants comes to the PCs for help. It seems their mentor is being held at an SDRC containment facility called Fenris Station and the savage wants them to break him out. Good locations include a burned-out warship from Operation Crossroads, the White Sands Proving Ground, or the Nevada Test Site, which has the distinct advantage of being within rampage-range of the Las Vegas Strip. I mention rampages because, sooner or later, Feynman and/or one of his students is going to flip their metaphysical lid and have to be put down...
Someone has died as a result of a student's wacky powers, either accidentally or in pursuit of a dark desire.(You can run this as an NPC, but it might be fun to make the players draw lots and let the murderer conceal their identity as long as they can. You could also let the players volunteer in secret. If no one does, run an NPC. If more than one does, let the bodies pile up!)
The murder puts the campus cops on high alert, but it also gives the SDRC the students' collective scent. As g-men close in on all sides, the PCs can try to solve the case themselves, cover it up, or just go nova! In fact, I'd run an enlightened NPC just to make sure someone goes destroy-the-city crazy by the end of the session.
Next Up: The voices in your head know the future!
