4.5 KiB
[MK] New character munchkin challenge: Pull nearly anything out of a backpack (/r/changestorms)
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Author: u/eaglejarl *
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Score: 3
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Created: 2015-09-21T15:42:16
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u/eaglejarl [+2] (50 minutes later)
Quinn Hallman is one of the main characters in my as-yet-unpublished, WIP novel Induction. His power is based on 'White Hole Man', a character that a friend of mine played in a Champions game ages ago; I've just nailed down some of the edge cases. His callsign is a nod to the 'White Hole Man' origin.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
[deleted]
u/eaglejarl [+2] (a day later)
Either his power is aware of any individual in line-of-sight of a container, or the container itself is imbued with some kind of awareness such that it can detect when it has been seen inside
The inside of the backpack is a quantum superposition and, when viewed, it collapses to its simplest state: empty.
So a transparent container could be covered in a substance that eliminates its transparency and it would then function as normal.
Yep, that would work.
could be a large object with large volume- so, I don't know, a room? A house? A warehouse? A container ship?
The backpack he has now is the largest volume he can manage.
I'm inside something I turn it into a container- room, house, boat, airplane, whatever, and accordingly merely need to be out of line-of-sight of someone to utilize it.
Even though it doesn't fly under the rules I built, that is a definitely epic concept. All the cookies to you.
The military doesn't like the SRD
The supply sergeant causing issues is believable as it is individually-affected bureaucracy but you're going to need a very good reason why the renowned-efficacious US military not only dislikes the SRD but is actively making them less effective.
There's several reasons, some better than others, and it's a combination of all of them:
Before the SRD was formed, the military got most of the Change Storm cleanup jobs. Many soldiers Changed as a result, meaning that most of them died or became monsters who could never be allowed to spend time with their families again. Then the SRD was formed and the military doesn't generally get those jobs any more. On the one hand, that's good, because the jobs are dangerous. On the other hand, they were also high-profile and really good for justifying budget requests and boosting enlistment. From the military's point of view, they did all the dying and the SRD is getting all the credit.
The SRD is organized under Homeland Security and is not military. Many senior military officers have major ethical/political problems with this -- the SRD is not subject to posse comitatus, for one thing. They are also disproportionately powerful for their numbers, and the military needs some ways to even the odds in case the SRD ever goes rogue. "Heavy weapons" is the first item on that list of ways to even things up.
The SRD is not military, so they do not behave like military, and they lack the strict discipline that is expected of soldiers. This gives reactionary military types the hives because tradition; more importantly, it gives responsible military types night terrors because they can more easily imagine an SRD operator going rogue than a soldier doing so.
SRD operators are paid way better than soldiers, and get nicer facilities. This is perfectly reasonable given the difference in the organizations and their staffing, but it still sticks in a lot of people's craws.
There are some legitimate ethical issues with the SRD that a lot of people aren't happy with. Changed who volunteer are very well paid and etc, but there are some Changed -- "red badges", like our protagonist Elly -- who volunteer only after being arrested. Most of them are just sent to the Camps, but the ones who are just too useful to throw away get recruited; they wear explosive collars to keep them from running away, and shockbelts to keep them in line. A lot of people have civil rights issues with that, and some of the senior military officers are among those people.