Vrock_Summoner
2016-08-24, 09:26 PM
I told one of my players that I'd been talking about our M&M game on the board, and she requested (okay, begged) that I tell you guys about a side session we'd done mostly one-on-one, mostly because she considers it a really great and emotional story (and she's a butt and totally just wants to show off Shae to whatever audience will tolerate learning something about her). I figured I could make the post a bit less self-serving by opening it up to all of you to share your own most emotional experiences in tabletop games.
The only really essential context of the story is that the character, Shae, is one of the creators of the universe and governs, among other things, those laws of physics that allow things to have shapes and to be physically separate from everything else. Shapes, both the physical construct and the metaphorical shape of a person's heart, are something she focuses on very strongly, and that focus is a core part of her identity. She's pretty much the ultimate shapeshifter, but for convenience, she's usually in a humanlike form unless another form is specifically useful.
Shae paced in the hall of the team's crystalline tower, her brow furrowed and her eyes closed. Her silent, thoughtful strides through the shady, spacious corridor were only occasionally broken by her need to dodge around the scampering ball of fuzz and energy she'd taken to calling Lucy.
"Lucy," Shae spoke up right after the pet darted past her, squatting down and looking at the lean collie. Seemingly in an effort to say "look, I'm aerodynamic!" Lucy jumped and turned simultaneously, sailing a short distance through the air before making what she imagined as a lithe and graceful connection to the floor. Instead, her claws slid across the slick floor and squabbled desperately at the floor for a second in a vain effort to regain her footing before sprawling out.
Shae cocked a half-smile. "Poor girl. I, for one, am very impressed with your show," she offered with gentle sarcasm as the energetic dog took back to her feet and trotted over expectantly. Shae ruffled Lucy's ears playfully, earning that open-mouthed tongue-lolling grin only a dog can pull off.
"Can you tell that I'm upset?" Shae asked somberly. "The longer I stay here, the more I wonder why I'm protecting this planet. All the people here are so fake. None I've met really appreciates their inner shapes." Lucy tilted her head at this, her tail thumping on the floor a couple of times as Shae continued. "I feel like nobody's genuine enough for me to really connect with. Humans and Angels alike, everyone is so..." She tilted her head to match the dog's. "Well, not everyone. I never feel like you're hiding anything. If there's one thing a dog is, it's sincere..."
Shae's brows began to lift as she spoke more slowly. "Say... If my issue is that nobody at my intellect level is genuine, then why don't I just boost up somebody who's already genuine? I've already got a perfect candidate."
Some experimentation with the cosmic essence of the universe later, Lucy's intellect and will were boosted immensely. Thanks to *mumble mumble* metaphysics stuff *mumble mumble* this also means Lucy got herself some nifty psychic powers.
The newly-awakened collie found herself unable to control her energy. Lucy bounded through the halls yet again, this time with her fur fully frayed out from the static shooting around her legs and sending her literally bouncing off the walls. "Whee! This is so much more - oof! - fun than running!"
Shae grinned widely at her success. "Yay! It worked! At last, my friend, we can communicate normally!"
Lucy wobbled in midair and went rolling onto the floor again until she eventually slowed to a stop. "Yes yes yes! I mean, I always knew how you were feeling, but all those weird sounds were nonsense. Except play and dinner, I like those sounds! Speaking of, talking is hard. Food please?"
Shae put up her hands. "Woah, there, Lucy, slow down. You're talking at a mile a minute. Now that you're able to request stuff, is there any human food you especially want?"
"Yes!" Lucy exclaimed, then sat in silence for a few seconds. "Wait, you expect me to pick just one?"
Some zany food adventures later...
Shae and Lucy sat on the roof of the crystal tower, feeling the cool breeze wash over them and the faint morning sun brighten their faces. Shae turned to Lucy and started with playful sarcasm. "Well now, Princess, is there anything else you want before we converse?"
Lucy tilted her head. "Well, the weather is nice, you're beaming with happiness, and I've got food in my- ooh! Rub my belly!" She rolled over onto her back, kicking her feet up into the sky. "Then I'll have everything I could ever want."
"That's it?" Shae asked, servicing the upturned tummy in its quest for rubs. "No bigger goals?"
"What can I say? I have what I need to be happy. Why? Do you think I should seek more?"
Shae gazed off into the distance for a moment. "No, I guess that sounds reasonable. I just wish I could find that couple of wants to fulfill that would make me so satisfied."
"Well, guess I'd better lead by example then!" Lucy piped up excitedly. "Oh, it's so wonderful being able to teach master tricks instead of just learning them! I feel like a genius! Okay, so the first thing, when it comes to life, treats equals winning..."
Lucy managed to ramble for several solid minutes about every first thought that passed into her head before Shae suddenly snapped to attention, her eyes focusing in on some indescernible point on the horizon. Shae started to stand, but Lucy forced her weight onto Shae's leg, leaning in on her protectively.
"Please, master, don't go! Now that I can sense it... It's so scary! I don't want you to get hurt!" Lucy begged and whined.
"It's okay, Lucy. I'll be fine. But with the others gone, I'm the only one close enough to protect this planet from that void being." She stood up the rest of the way, patting Lucy's head. "I'll be home in time for dinner, okay?"
Lucy shook her head. "No way are you going alone! If you have to go at all, I have to protect you, master!"
"Why? What obligation are you under?"
"No less than yours to this planet you can't seem to admit to loving."
Shae pouted. "You're wrong and I hate it here," she said indignantly. However, her pout cracked into a smile. "Though I sure love you. C'mon then, but leave the hard stuff to me."
Shae sprouted wings of darkness and Lucy's legs started crackling with electrical power, and the two flew off to face the being outside city limits.
Shae was surprised to find a void being for whom English words were in many ways adequate to describe it. It was red, splotchy, shaped sort of like a chunky hair ball, and surrounded by quickly revolving teeth-like spikes. She frowned a little bit at how boring a story it would make compared to the team's usual enemies. (Meta-humor!)
The duo faced off with the void being above a forested mountain range.
Shae led off the attack, transforming her arm into a massive, slick, black, serpentine dragon, which charged the void being. The dragon used its armored nose to bat the void being straight up, then looked up, it's mouth gaping open. A rancid gout of obsidian fire erupted from its throat, engulfing the void being and leading off into a column of destruction all the way up through the atmosphere, igniting the air and causing a local firestorm in the process.
(Editor's note: "Rancid" was not random adjective choice; dragon breath has the stank.)
The void being emerged mostly unscathed, and it lashed out with its teeth-spikes like a whip, carving the dragon into bits and slicing apart the mountains below with each strike. Its attacks reached Shae, slicing the dragon-arm off of her at the shoulder and delivering a grievous slash wound to her torso.
Shae grimaced as thick, oil-like blood seeped out from her shoulder. She concentrated on it, and it began to whirl around her like a black dust devil. She charged in, using the shield to block the teeth until she could close and deliver a punch to the void being's body. This stunned the being into stopping its teeth for a moment, allowing Shae to grab them. They promptly transformed into a dusty, metallic substance.
Shae smiled, telepathically transmitting to the void being. "Plutonium. Way past critical mass. Bye-bye~"
She projected a massive silverish bubble, containing the energy of the explosion within a sphere a few hundred meters across, which glowed with an extreme and lasting brightness.
"Gambi hasn't taught me how to dissipate these things yet, so I'll probably have to take this off the planet before I put the field down." She turned to face Lucy. "That should take care of that, though-"
Two slice marks appeared on the field from within, and the energy and pressure of the contained nuclear explosion jetted out in a mostly straight line, blasting two of the mountains down to bubbling craters and leaving a long swath of destruction leading out from the entry points. The field then collapsed completely, and Shae found herself with a row of spikes in her back before she could even turn back around. The whips tore out of her messily, then poised to strike again.
As they flashed out again, however, Lucy bolted in the way, receiving terrible wounds from the spikes. Shae looked horrified for a moment, but quickly noticed Lucy letting out a strong psychic signal.
Waves began emanating off of Lucy towards the heavily damaged void being emerging from the debris, and the dog's wounds seemed to melt off, more sliding back into the "restored" position than really healing. As this happened, the void being's wounds grew, and became so severe that it began to shake violently before shattering into dust-sized pieces.
Shae grinned triumphantly, moving forward to celebrate with Lucy, but at that moment, the airborne collie's electrical power winked out of existence and she fell down towards the forest below. Shae leapt to the rescue, catching her and gently lowering her whimpering companion.
"What's wrong?" Shae asked with alarm. "Are you still injured?"
Lucy yelped loudly over and over, sending out garbled telepathic signals repeatedly. Shae concentrated on the signals, eventually making out "please change me back."
"... Change you back?" Shae repeated, sounding like she'd just been punched.
"I don't want this!" Lucy blubbered. "Seeing you getting hurt and killing something and knowing what it all means so intimately and the fear and..." Lucy trailed off, convulsing.
"But... But weren't you happy that we could talk and make each other happy? We don't have to be alone in our mindsets and-"
"I don't care! Please let me go back! Please! Please!"
"Lucy, I don't want-"
"Please! Please! Please!"
Shae put her hand to Lucy's head. It shimmered with a silver hue for a moment, and Lucy stopped projecting anything telepathically. She laid on her side for a moment, but her breathing quickly began to calm and she stopped convulsing.
Shae walked away from the relaxing collie, and sat next up against a tree. She put her face in her remaining hand, frowning and going totally rigid.
Lucy stood up several minutes later, tilting her head at Shae's silent and still figure. She trotted over, sniffing Shae's face. Shae's rigidity was broken as she began to tremble, tears streaming down her face from behind her hand. Lucy licked Shae once, then curled up to lay against her with a grunt.
Shae awakened intelligence and powers in the team's more mundane pet, wishing for a companion without what she sees as socially-constructed facades inherent to human company, but her new doggie friend is made so miserable by the horrors of a world she couldn't formerly understand that she begs to have her intelligence taken away again, leaving Shae back where she started but with the feeling of losing a friend.
I'm sure at least a couple of you can beat this one (but don't tell Shae's player I said that). I'm interested in seeing what you guys have to offer on this topic.
The only really essential context of the story is that the character, Shae, is one of the creators of the universe and governs, among other things, those laws of physics that allow things to have shapes and to be physically separate from everything else. Shapes, both the physical construct and the metaphorical shape of a person's heart, are something she focuses on very strongly, and that focus is a core part of her identity. She's pretty much the ultimate shapeshifter, but for convenience, she's usually in a humanlike form unless another form is specifically useful.
Shae paced in the hall of the team's crystalline tower, her brow furrowed and her eyes closed. Her silent, thoughtful strides through the shady, spacious corridor were only occasionally broken by her need to dodge around the scampering ball of fuzz and energy she'd taken to calling Lucy.
"Lucy," Shae spoke up right after the pet darted past her, squatting down and looking at the lean collie. Seemingly in an effort to say "look, I'm aerodynamic!" Lucy jumped and turned simultaneously, sailing a short distance through the air before making what she imagined as a lithe and graceful connection to the floor. Instead, her claws slid across the slick floor and squabbled desperately at the floor for a second in a vain effort to regain her footing before sprawling out.
Shae cocked a half-smile. "Poor girl. I, for one, am very impressed with your show," she offered with gentle sarcasm as the energetic dog took back to her feet and trotted over expectantly. Shae ruffled Lucy's ears playfully, earning that open-mouthed tongue-lolling grin only a dog can pull off.
"Can you tell that I'm upset?" Shae asked somberly. "The longer I stay here, the more I wonder why I'm protecting this planet. All the people here are so fake. None I've met really appreciates their inner shapes." Lucy tilted her head at this, her tail thumping on the floor a couple of times as Shae continued. "I feel like nobody's genuine enough for me to really connect with. Humans and Angels alike, everyone is so..." She tilted her head to match the dog's. "Well, not everyone. I never feel like you're hiding anything. If there's one thing a dog is, it's sincere..."
Shae's brows began to lift as she spoke more slowly. "Say... If my issue is that nobody at my intellect level is genuine, then why don't I just boost up somebody who's already genuine? I've already got a perfect candidate."
Some experimentation with the cosmic essence of the universe later, Lucy's intellect and will were boosted immensely. Thanks to *mumble mumble* metaphysics stuff *mumble mumble* this also means Lucy got herself some nifty psychic powers.
The newly-awakened collie found herself unable to control her energy. Lucy bounded through the halls yet again, this time with her fur fully frayed out from the static shooting around her legs and sending her literally bouncing off the walls. "Whee! This is so much more - oof! - fun than running!"
Shae grinned widely at her success. "Yay! It worked! At last, my friend, we can communicate normally!"
Lucy wobbled in midair and went rolling onto the floor again until she eventually slowed to a stop. "Yes yes yes! I mean, I always knew how you were feeling, but all those weird sounds were nonsense. Except play and dinner, I like those sounds! Speaking of, talking is hard. Food please?"
Shae put up her hands. "Woah, there, Lucy, slow down. You're talking at a mile a minute. Now that you're able to request stuff, is there any human food you especially want?"
"Yes!" Lucy exclaimed, then sat in silence for a few seconds. "Wait, you expect me to pick just one?"
Some zany food adventures later...
Shae and Lucy sat on the roof of the crystal tower, feeling the cool breeze wash over them and the faint morning sun brighten their faces. Shae turned to Lucy and started with playful sarcasm. "Well now, Princess, is there anything else you want before we converse?"
Lucy tilted her head. "Well, the weather is nice, you're beaming with happiness, and I've got food in my- ooh! Rub my belly!" She rolled over onto her back, kicking her feet up into the sky. "Then I'll have everything I could ever want."
"That's it?" Shae asked, servicing the upturned tummy in its quest for rubs. "No bigger goals?"
"What can I say? I have what I need to be happy. Why? Do you think I should seek more?"
Shae gazed off into the distance for a moment. "No, I guess that sounds reasonable. I just wish I could find that couple of wants to fulfill that would make me so satisfied."
"Well, guess I'd better lead by example then!" Lucy piped up excitedly. "Oh, it's so wonderful being able to teach master tricks instead of just learning them! I feel like a genius! Okay, so the first thing, when it comes to life, treats equals winning..."
Lucy managed to ramble for several solid minutes about every first thought that passed into her head before Shae suddenly snapped to attention, her eyes focusing in on some indescernible point on the horizon. Shae started to stand, but Lucy forced her weight onto Shae's leg, leaning in on her protectively.
"Please, master, don't go! Now that I can sense it... It's so scary! I don't want you to get hurt!" Lucy begged and whined.
"It's okay, Lucy. I'll be fine. But with the others gone, I'm the only one close enough to protect this planet from that void being." She stood up the rest of the way, patting Lucy's head. "I'll be home in time for dinner, okay?"
Lucy shook her head. "No way are you going alone! If you have to go at all, I have to protect you, master!"
"Why? What obligation are you under?"
"No less than yours to this planet you can't seem to admit to loving."
Shae pouted. "You're wrong and I hate it here," she said indignantly. However, her pout cracked into a smile. "Though I sure love you. C'mon then, but leave the hard stuff to me."
Shae sprouted wings of darkness and Lucy's legs started crackling with electrical power, and the two flew off to face the being outside city limits.
Shae was surprised to find a void being for whom English words were in many ways adequate to describe it. It was red, splotchy, shaped sort of like a chunky hair ball, and surrounded by quickly revolving teeth-like spikes. She frowned a little bit at how boring a story it would make compared to the team's usual enemies. (Meta-humor!)
The duo faced off with the void being above a forested mountain range.
Shae led off the attack, transforming her arm into a massive, slick, black, serpentine dragon, which charged the void being. The dragon used its armored nose to bat the void being straight up, then looked up, it's mouth gaping open. A rancid gout of obsidian fire erupted from its throat, engulfing the void being and leading off into a column of destruction all the way up through the atmosphere, igniting the air and causing a local firestorm in the process.
(Editor's note: "Rancid" was not random adjective choice; dragon breath has the stank.)
The void being emerged mostly unscathed, and it lashed out with its teeth-spikes like a whip, carving the dragon into bits and slicing apart the mountains below with each strike. Its attacks reached Shae, slicing the dragon-arm off of her at the shoulder and delivering a grievous slash wound to her torso.
Shae grimaced as thick, oil-like blood seeped out from her shoulder. She concentrated on it, and it began to whirl around her like a black dust devil. She charged in, using the shield to block the teeth until she could close and deliver a punch to the void being's body. This stunned the being into stopping its teeth for a moment, allowing Shae to grab them. They promptly transformed into a dusty, metallic substance.
Shae smiled, telepathically transmitting to the void being. "Plutonium. Way past critical mass. Bye-bye~"
She projected a massive silverish bubble, containing the energy of the explosion within a sphere a few hundred meters across, which glowed with an extreme and lasting brightness.
"Gambi hasn't taught me how to dissipate these things yet, so I'll probably have to take this off the planet before I put the field down." She turned to face Lucy. "That should take care of that, though-"
Two slice marks appeared on the field from within, and the energy and pressure of the contained nuclear explosion jetted out in a mostly straight line, blasting two of the mountains down to bubbling craters and leaving a long swath of destruction leading out from the entry points. The field then collapsed completely, and Shae found herself with a row of spikes in her back before she could even turn back around. The whips tore out of her messily, then poised to strike again.
As they flashed out again, however, Lucy bolted in the way, receiving terrible wounds from the spikes. Shae looked horrified for a moment, but quickly noticed Lucy letting out a strong psychic signal.
Waves began emanating off of Lucy towards the heavily damaged void being emerging from the debris, and the dog's wounds seemed to melt off, more sliding back into the "restored" position than really healing. As this happened, the void being's wounds grew, and became so severe that it began to shake violently before shattering into dust-sized pieces.
Shae grinned triumphantly, moving forward to celebrate with Lucy, but at that moment, the airborne collie's electrical power winked out of existence and she fell down towards the forest below. Shae leapt to the rescue, catching her and gently lowering her whimpering companion.
"What's wrong?" Shae asked with alarm. "Are you still injured?"
Lucy yelped loudly over and over, sending out garbled telepathic signals repeatedly. Shae concentrated on the signals, eventually making out "please change me back."
"... Change you back?" Shae repeated, sounding like she'd just been punched.
"I don't want this!" Lucy blubbered. "Seeing you getting hurt and killing something and knowing what it all means so intimately and the fear and..." Lucy trailed off, convulsing.
"But... But weren't you happy that we could talk and make each other happy? We don't have to be alone in our mindsets and-"
"I don't care! Please let me go back! Please! Please!"
"Lucy, I don't want-"
"Please! Please! Please!"
Shae put her hand to Lucy's head. It shimmered with a silver hue for a moment, and Lucy stopped projecting anything telepathically. She laid on her side for a moment, but her breathing quickly began to calm and she stopped convulsing.
Shae walked away from the relaxing collie, and sat next up against a tree. She put her face in her remaining hand, frowning and going totally rigid.
Lucy stood up several minutes later, tilting her head at Shae's silent and still figure. She trotted over, sniffing Shae's face. Shae's rigidity was broken as she began to tremble, tears streaming down her face from behind her hand. Lucy licked Shae once, then curled up to lay against her with a grunt.
Shae awakened intelligence and powers in the team's more mundane pet, wishing for a companion without what she sees as socially-constructed facades inherent to human company, but her new doggie friend is made so miserable by the horrors of a world she couldn't formerly understand that she begs to have her intelligence taken away again, leaving Shae back where she started but with the feeling of losing a friend.
I'm sure at least a couple of you can beat this one (but don't tell Shae's player I said that). I'm interested in seeing what you guys have to offer on this topic.