Difference between revisions of "PAW Collab"

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===Jonathan Gallian===
 
===Jonathan Gallian===
 +
(Arrow's character)
  
 
*Age: 25
 
*Age: 25

Revision as of 21:34, 4 October 2007

This page contains the entire setup and story for a collaboration/round-robin story set in the Pig and Whistle universe. As much as Little Things is the opening story in the universe, this is intended to fill in some details of the universe and as the "opening salvo" - ie: it's what is intended to introduce Pig and Whistle to TSA-Talk. The participants are Devin Hallsworth, ShadowWolf, Michael Bard, Felix, Cubist and Arrow Quivershaft.

The Pig and Whistle universe is open and this collaboration is just one story using the setting. Feel free to read the Pig and Whistle universe guidelines and write your own stories!

Characters

"Coati"

(Bard's character)

  • Age: Unknown
  • Species: Female coati (non-morphic, normal sized - 25" long including tail, about 5kg)/organized colony of non-differentiated cells (think "The Thing")
  • Powers: After consuming 100 grams or so of a creature, can form a cocoon and grow into a duplicate as long as it is roughly the same mass, or smaller. If not, will need time to get the mass. The cocoon lasts from 2-8 weeks. Cannot be killed unless ALL cells are destroyed (fire, electricity, acid, some poisons). Losing cells causes some loss of memory/knowledge as information is stored in various cells with various levels of duplication depending on importance. This power is NOT generally known.

Looks very disreputable and battered. Fur is scruffy, some is missing, very thin and malnourished, wild look in her eyes. She doesn't talk much about the details of her past. Something occurred that haunts her, and she wants to forget but can't (alcohol doesn't affect her).

She's a regular at the bar. Nobody knows where she lives, speculation is under the roof or some other appropriately small lair. She has employment of some kind. Note that she does not spread around the fact that she has powers, though she has been different species once or twice, staying so for a long time. The fact that she's been different species does come up regularly in conversation -- she just doesn't comment further. She's been a coati for the last five years.

Susanna Douglas

(Devin's character)

  • Age: 26
  • Species: Human


Susanna Douglas or 'Sue' as she prefers to be called is a student and part time tutor at a dance studio in town. This fact is not unusual in itself until you consider that at the age of seventeen when riding home from a party with her friends she lost her legs in a car crash.

Her injuries required a transfemoral amputation of both legs,(cut above the knees) but left the rest of her body intact. Before the turn of the century or even at the very beginning of it such an injury would have left her wheelchair bound for the rest of her life but with the middle east and post collapse wars of the time came a new wave of investment and research into the field of prosthetics. Today thanks to advances in elastomers capable of matching the performance of organic muscle tissue and small yet highly advanced computers that can predict what motions the user will be going through and compensate Sue isn't just able to walk, she has competed in at least three dance tournaments.

After a few years of getting used to the human model and realizing that she needed a bit more stable of an income Sue got in with a local prosthetics company to test out a transfemoral prosthesis for Teefers as the company had been unable to find any Teefer transfemoral amputees to test their designs with. Her current prosthesis is based on a common leg design that occurs in many mammal Teefers http://deer.transform.to/SL/FullFox.jpg but with hooves instead of paws in order to provide more traction. As the prosthetics she is currently using have not yet been refined for commercial use they do not have a synthetic skin over top the actual leg and resemble similar prototype prosthetics from the beginning of the century instead of an actual furred leg as they will when they are put on the market. http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/24/festos-fluidic-muscles-make-us-all-look-weak/

Jonathan Gallian

(Arrow's character)

  • Age: 25
  • Species: Nonanthro Red-Tailed Hawk. Incapable of speech, no outwards human features.
  • Powers: Weak Telepathy(One way at ranges of up to 50 feet, becoming progressively weaker with range beyond 20 feet; two way only with total concentration and at no more than 10 feet), Weak Telekinesis(No more than 1 kilogram, range of 5 feet, at a range of 1 foot or less, can grip and hold objects decently enough to write shakily.)

Details pending.

Alexander Henninger

(Cubist's character)

  • Age: 37
  • Species: Altered human
  • TFOR-derived traits: TFOR seems to have inflicted on Alex many of the metabolic quirks of an exceptionally high-temperature-tolerant extremophile. As a result of these changes, Alex has a stable body temperature of a bit over 190° Fahrenheit. It is unclear whether or not Alex still ages in the usual manner.
  • Appearance: Alex is a 5'11" tall humanoid; he weighs 425 lbs, but given his overall body type/build, he looks like he's not an ounce over 180 lbs. His skin is not unlike solidified slag; it's rough, craggy, and black. That's chromatic-black, not skin-tone-black. He has no hair. His eyes are solid red, and they can be seen to glow faintly when the ambient lighting is sufficiently weak.

Alex was an undistinguished hardware specialist when he came down with a case of 'the torch'. Unlike most victims of blowtorch fever, Alex never cooled down; rather, over a period of two weeks his temperature just kept climbing until it leveled off at 193 degrees. Alex must now wear an insulated body suit at all times. This suit serves two purposes: First, it prevents him from causing second-degree-burns to any normal person who inadvertently comes in contact with him. Second, the body suit ensures that Alex does not freeze to death in what others regard as normal temperature.
Alex's condition can be considered helpful to his profession, inasmuch as he can melt solder in his bare hands; by the same token, however, he must be careful about where he touches circuit boards and such.

Scott Summers Jameson

(ShadowWolf's character)

  • Age: 35
  • Species: Wolf
  • Fur: Black
  • Powers: Slow aging, creation and projection of balls of plasma

About 2 meters tall with matte black fur (a true black - it doesn't show up dark purple under any light like most does) he was employed by PPL (Pennsylvania Power and Light) as a lineman before the collapse. Six months into the collapse he was admitted into the hospital in the opening stages of blowtorch fever. Leaving the hospital after the completion of his change he joined the Pennsylvania National Guard and was rapidly promoted to Sergeant and transferred into their new special operations unit. When the Canadian Army invaded his unit did a lot of damage before receiving orders to stand down, because the 'Commonwealth of Pennsylvania' was joining Canada.

Dashiel Peters

(Felix's Character)

  • Age - 34
  • Species: Canadian Lynx Has stubby hand/paws, and more than normal flexibility in the shoulders. Looks like the real cat. Uses a false palate to talk clearly.
  • Powers: non known (yet)

Dash peters had the torch three times before changing. He is a passionate Green, and does a wildlife TV show as the host for a living. He's also a writer of wildlife books, with several to his credit. His show combines images shot with his collar cam with tracking shots done by a human crew. Dash lives when in town in a lair/den in the hotel. He wears shorts for modesty in town, and a belt which carries a number of accessories. When in town, he's a regular at the bar, although he has to drink from a bowl.

During the Collapse, was an enlisted man in the U. S. Navy overseas. When the Navy was absorbed by the NAR, returned home and went to school, gaining a BA in Forestry.

The Story

Call me crazy, if you want. Here I am wearing a full fur coat during one of the hottest summers since the Collapse. But I can't just take it off - that fur coat is part of me, just as the muzzle and ears are part of me. Yep, I'm a teefer - one of the numerous sufferers of the disease known as "Transformative Failure of Ontogenetic Regulation". In this case the transformation left me with a matte-black fur coat and all kinds of other features normally only found on a member of Canis Lupis or Canis Familiaris.

Sure, it's made me immortal - I haven't aged a day since the aptly named "blowtorch fever" progressed into TFOR and left me the walking, talking fur-coat I am today. Sure, it's a hard life, I changed during the height of the collapse, before Canada invaded, so I've had a long time to get over any mental problems I may have had. Yeah, that did take a long time.

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I opened the door to the "Pig and Whistle" and waved to Gordy as I crossed the floor, heading for my normal table. There was one figure seated already - and the insulating suit was the only thing I needed to know who it was.

"Hey Hephy! Wish I'd had you on site today. Idiot I was working with seemed to barely know which end of the torch to point at the wires." His name's Alex, but there are so many nicknames that have gotten attached to him its pitiful.

"Your usual, Scott?" Gordies almost subsonic bass rumbled across the room to me.

"You know it!" I yelled back as I took a seat across the table from Alex.

Knowing that I couldn't have been only the second of my usual group of drinking buddies to arrive I sniffed the air. It carried all the normal scents of the bar, but there was the distinct undercurrent of something else - an animal that shouldn't be in the bar itself but often was. So I looked up into the exposed beams of the trestle roof and caught a glimpse of brown fur and black-striped tail. That'd be Coati - don't know what her name was before TFOR got her (or even if she started life as a female), but us teefers are a hardy bunch. Her only problem is that she's all but given up on life - her fur is nasty, matted and uncared for and she is scrawny, as if she doesn't get enough to eat.

But that doesn't stop me from being her friend. With the torch and the collapse having consumed an estimated fifty percent of the worlds population we've got to stick together. At least we aren't persecuted…Well, at least not here in Polyton County, New York—I faced my share of small minded idiots during the war that destroyed the "New Confederacy" and made it part of the NAR.

But that's besides the point. If things hold true to form Coati will stay up in the rafters until the other two members of our tiny group of friends shows up. And no, we aren't all teefers—Susanna Douglas, our groups youngest (we think) is still human, even though she does testing of leg prosthetics made for teefers. If she ever comes down with TFOR, I'm hoping that it's kind to her and she gets her legs back. A healing power would be a nice bonus for her—seeing as she lost her legs before she graduated high school.

"Well..." I started to say something, because I didn't know when the rest of our group would show. Dashiel was in town, but as much work as he does on those documentaries of his means I can't be certain of when he'll get here, and Susanna would probably be the next person through the doors—if she wasn't over in the Hotel talking to one of the teefers that had benefited from the prosthetics testing she does.

"How's life treating you, Tuvok?" Don't worry if you don't get that nickname of Alex's. It refers to a pre-collapse TV show—the character Tuvok looked to be of African descent, but was an alien from the planet Vulcan. And Vulcan was the Roman name for the Greek God Hephaestus—fitting moniker for a guy that looks like a living pile of lava, no?

Story Snippets (to add in where appropriate)

Coati's Snippets

On Flight

Fumbling around at her matted fur, she pulled out a battered microphone and begin making what sounded like croaks and hisses into it. It didn't take long for her more familiar voice to work its way out of her voder.

"Yea, flying has its moments. But then, everybody knows about the freedom, the power. What was that book somebody wrote-- A Gull's Life-- Anyway, there are other things.

"I'm sure you've ran into them. Stupid bastards so full of their own importance that they're always right. And then there are those who's car has to always be perfect. Spotless. Absolutely pristine.

"Ran into one of those idiots when I was a raven. Brought back too many memories of minimum wage crap jobs. Especially those involving gas pumping and spending half an hour scrubbing the bird crap off a window because the bastard's too cheap to pay a carwash to do it."

The coati clasped her paws together.

"Too long a life, too many bad memories. But leading an entire flock, technically an unkindness, and painting the bastards car white was priceless.

"He just got caught in the fallout you might say."

She looked around, tapping a hind paw on the table, awaiting the expected reaction.

On Government

"Government? Pah! The only reason I'm not all for anarchy these days is that modern weapons are too destructive. Hell, I'm all for making up a Colossus and letting him worry about it. Keep a trained army in reserve in cryogenic storage, and bring it out when needed. Otherwise, let happen what may. Can't be any worse than what we got now.

"The only smart thing government's ever done is when the got rid of the old income tax as their records were all bummed up. Of course, it took them all of 6 months after finishing paying for WW1 to re-institute income tax to pay for Teefer Recover. If figure that'll take till 2400 or so.

"As to local government, pah! Only worthwhile one I ever heard of was pre-torch Toronto. They got amalgamated and the new city council was so big that all they could do was argue and debate, year after year. Pass laws? Never! Their salaries were worth it just because it kept them busy and not doing anything. Instead private enterprise took over the void and now Toronto's one of the most beautiful and most wealthy cities in the NAR.

"I just say go with Heinlein. Select people at random and e-mail them laws to debate and vote on. No monetary remuneration involved. Drag them kicking and screaming and they can get the job done and then go away."

On Gun Control in the NAR

Holding the microphone upside down and shaking some of that foul smelling liquid she was drinking out of it, she tapped it and hissed into it.

"Testing-- testing-- damn cheap tech. Anyway, you were talking about Texas. I was down there once, just after the wars. Damn suspicious bastards, didn't trust anybody then. Shoot first, ask questions later. So I'm sneaking around, not spying or anything, just don't trust men with guns. It's a girl thing.

"And stop that sniggering!

"You ever been shot at? Felt bullets hissing across your back? Felt, not hate, but just uncaring annoyance directed at you? It's not pleasant, let me tell you. I was young and foolish then, just trying to find a rat or something to eat. Let me tell you, buckshot through the backside hurts like a son of a bitch! Still now sure how I dragged myself to someplace safe to heal. He'd probably have torched me otherwise.

"So don't you joke about guns, not around me! Canadian gun laws are the best thing that ever happened to us. What the hell need is there for concealed pistols to defend personal liberty anyway? And now they want to register teefer powers? I'm all for it."

She took a drink and a few vapours wisped from her nostrils.

Mumbling something to herself, the microphone still picked it up and the voder translated: "*crackle* memories-- always *hiss* always--"

On Immortality

She sat there, staring past and through us. Her voice, even through her 'voder was cold and emotionless.

"Have you ever wondered," she began, not talking to us even though we were all listening, "what it would be like to live forever. To be cursed with your regrets, your hates, the things you always try to forget but never can, forever. For all time. To watch all your friends, even your enemies, turn to dust and vanish, lost in time as your memory of them fades and vanishes as if it never were? To stand there, on the sand-filled beach of eternity watching humanity die, watching the animals, the plants die. To stand there on an empty beach of dust as the moon moves away, smaller and smaller. As the sun grows dimmer and larger, hotter and redder year by year.

"To be there on the beach at the end of time when the Time Traveller appears, freshly escaped from the Morlocks, knowing that he can go back, but you never can?

"And it will only end when the sun expands, and the oceans boil, and the atmosphere is blasted away by Sol. Only then will the pain finally stop in blissful nonexistence."

Turning away she took a long draw on her drink.

End of the Night for Coati

"Hey Coati, Phone for you," Gordie boomed out.

Who would call Coati, and here?

She hissed into the microphone. "Ack in a bite." God alone knew what the concoction was she was dripping on the microphone. Some nights she seemed to have a death wish. At least she wasn't too bad tonight. Some nights--

I took a sip and watched her click and claw her way up the rafter and along one of the beams, jumping down by the phone Gordie was holding out to her.

"Just be glad I'm a nice guy and let you use my number," Gordie said.

She just mumbled something, and fiddled with the thing. Must have screwed up the volume as we could hear everything she said.

"This better be important, I've told you--"

"What? The quality isn't good enough? Given what we've spent on the damn 'voder--"

"The backers? Jesus, I told you to have them sign--"

"Yea, you needed the funding. Fine. What--"

"You want to fly me down? Fuck! At this time of night?"

"You know as well as I do that there is no detectable difference in the sound quality." Her voice changed into a high squeaky child's sound. "This is so cute! Even on this wonderment of tech over this amazing phone line you can hear how happy I am!" She was literally bouncing in place.

God, she sounded like the happiest child on earth. It was almost terrifying.

Her voice changed back to normal. "Fine. You have the flight set up, not just a third class parcel with air and water? When is it?"

She turned away from the phone. "Hey Gordie, what time is it?"

Gordie just looked at her. "Almost 10. You know you got the volume cranked way up?"

She blinked, and looked around at the bar, all looking at her. "Fuck. The things I do to try and make up for--"

She fiddled with the thing and we couldn't hear anymore. A few minute later she managed to lug the headset and hang it up -- sometimes the muscles she had on that scrawny frame surprised me. "Sorry guys, gotta go."

Scotts Snippets

On the "New Confederacy"

I never agreed with the decision to invade and annex the New Confederacy. And my reasoning is simple - I remembered the history I'd learned in school, and had taken a few "American History" classes in college. The "American Civil War" had such far reaching and long lasting consequences that the end of them hadn't been seen more than a hundred years later. With the even heavier arming of both sides - and the level of training on both sides - I couldn't see the war with the New Confederacy being as easy as the politicians claimed, nor would it end when the politicians signed their treaties.

Sure, there was some really nasty shit going on in there, but the way I saw it was that it wouldn't be that way if the people didn't want it that way. But I wasn't a politician - I was a grunt. What's that old phrase... Yeah, "Cry havoc and loose the dogs of war!" That was me and my men - literally. The name of my company was "The Dogs of War", though more than one general called us "Havok's Hound's"... Must have been comic-book fans - my name 'Scott Summers Jameson' is quite similar to the name of an old comic book character - Cyclops. His brother was "Alex Summers" was Havok, and "Havok's Hounds" has a ring to it.

Anyway, there were only a few times when I was happy to have been in fights with the New Confederacy. One of those was when I found a "Teefer Slave Camp" - literally a camp where they broke teefers wills so they could be sold as slave labor. The other time was when we stumbled into the staging area for a Tank Division just before the Battle of Atlanta. They were in the underground level of a parking garage - and opened fire before I could let them know that I was going to let them go. After all, I didn't agree with the war and had done the same thing a number of times.

The first barrage hit Jennifer Long, a feline morph of some sort that had a hyped-up healing power. She was the first and last soldier I lost, and it almost drove me mad - we'd been discussing marriage after the war at breakfast that day. I don't remember the battle all that well, but I do remember that I didn't use my rifle. What I did left those tanks with holes melted through them and soldiers with third degree burns.

What? How did I manage that? Susanna, I wasn't feared by the Canadians during the fight for Pennsylvania just because my men had never been seen before the attack began. I don't like to advertise the fact, but I can throw very hot balls of fire. Hot enough to melt through the composite 'Chobham Armor'.

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I stop for a sip of my beer and look around the table. Skunk seems the most surprised by the revelation of my power - or maybe it's the revelation that I'm not the "Pro-NAR" automaton most people think I am. Not that it matters - if I'm declared a criminal because of what I've just revealed of my actions during the "Battle for Atlanta" I can always head south and disappear. There are places down there that will take me in, just because I'm known to have been sympathetic to their cause.

On "Blowtorch Fever"

It can't be natural, you know? Look at the facts – it's rare for a fever to hit 104° and the torch has been recorded as high as 110°… Hell, look at Alex here–with him the temp just kept going up and now it's what's normal for him. Not that I'm complaining—you should see how fast he can make a solder-joint between cable-ends. That slag-like skin of his has a purpose, that's for sure–he can handle molten solder with his bare hands as easily as he can melt the stuff.

But really… When I went through the torch the only thing that kept me alive was the snow on the ground. Yep – it was the middle of December in the Blue Mountain region of the Appalachians. Naked, laying in the snow outside with a cold saline drip. At first I wasn't going to do it – the doc's had to have a better way, right? Wrong. The US National power grid had been severed by then and the power plants that existed locally couldn't fill the demand, even with only emergency services connected. Hospitals were running their generators into the ground and the fuel supply was already highly rationed.

And then came TFOR. At that point I was glad my parents had died during the first wave of panic at the head of the collapse. They were strict Mennonites and what TFOR did to me would have had them convinced I had been cursed by God. And even if they'd been able to accept that it wasn't some curse for some imagined sin I wouldn't have wanted them to be around while TFOR turned me into the handsome beast I am today. And I'm sure that the brains working on the problem will find the cause of TFOR soon–not like it could be some alien bug, right? It's either a man-made thing – which, admittedly, it pretty much has to be – or it's one of the strangest bugs to ever come out of Africa.

Huh? The stranger forms, like Alex? Well. Suze, I guess that is a point in favor of the bug that gave us the torch and TFOR being alien. But where are the aliens that brought it to Earth? Surely we'd have found their ship if they'd crashed and anyway, how could a bug specializing in one species make the jump to a species that evolved in a completely different biosphere? And if it's not a natural bug – and I don't think even a naturally occurring alien bug could do what this one does – then why unleash it and disappear? Isn't it more likely that they've unleashed it to make us easier to conquer or something similar?

So, Suze, I'd have to say that it's fun to think that the TFOR bug might be a gift from ET, but I'm pretty sure it originated here on Earth. Somebody created a bug and it got free. It probably killed him and everyone else involved with the project, but that's besides the point.