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All Hoffman Employees are reminded of Directive 304.B
Quote:
304 (B). Discretion in Unusual Circumstances
i. All members and recruits (provisional appointments) of the Institute are expected to keep activities out of the public eye. The Institute is not a public agency and it wishes to avoid legal and criminal entanglements. Any and all measures are approved to maintain that condition.
ii. All members and recruits of the Institute should take precautions to prevent evidence or eyewitnesses from spreading knowledge of the Institute’s research. At the same time, all reasonable good-faith efforts should be made to provide the Institute with clear, complete records and documentation of unusual events.
Brilliant, middle-aged scientist whose prime field work days are behind him. Strong sense of justice, more curmudgeon-y than he'd like to admit.
Sipping, Theo smacks his lips in appreciation. "Thanks Janice, that burns just right... "
His intern beams, going on to exhaust her pre-canned remarks and flatteries. Again. Theodore barely keeps from rolling his eyes - universities these days push "professional development seminars" ad nauseum!
Still, he had to admit that after years of roughing it in underfunded research facilities in God-forsaken bits of the world, the creature comforts of corporate life appealed greatly to him, especially since he had discovered the first creaks in his joints!
"... So, as I was saying, I have the privilege of experiencing a Maymester abroad in Japan, and I would be delighted if you, as an esteemed, trusted mentor, could provide me with a positive letter of recommendation? "
He starts. "Japan! Why in the world would you choose to go there! I went there for work once, barely escaped with my life! "
She blinks, perplexed, and sputters as she tries to explain. To save her embarrassment, he sends her away for a donut.
Confused, and a little paranoid, Theodore wakes up his computer for a quick Bing. "Huh, that's an odd design choice, " he remarks at the newly updated site. "Ah well, never much understood design mysel... "
He trails off, stunned. "The Engulfment" - articles about plants. No mention of the death toll, ecological catastrophes, Breaking of Honshu, ongoing tensions...
Feeling as if in a dream, Theodore drifts through to the afternoon. Alone with his thoughts - Janice long fled to flirt with the mail boy - a loud knock interlopes, and Theo flinches.
"Hah! Need your diaper changed? You know the director hates stinkers. "
Trevor Uland. Young, good-looking, and the bane of Theo's existence. At least some things remained the same. "What, your daycare job slow down? "
Barbs traded, Theo and Trevor waste no time and mince no words heading to the director's office. Maybe this had something to do with his crazy day? It would be the classic end to a nightmare. In case this is real life, Theo's sharp mind goes through all the permutations.
"Ah, good, you're here. Take a seat. Tell me, how many fingers does the sitting president have? "
Panic. Either waking or sleeping this was definitely a nightmare. "Ah, well when I woke up, everyone knew the answer was seven. "
Trevor laughs uproariously. "Hah! I knew you were off your rocker, but I thought you had a few good years left! Twelve, obviously. "
Smiling broadly, the director shakes his head. "More accurately, last night. Tell me, are you experiencing any dizziness? Nausea? Fatigue? Ear discharge?... "
The list is nauseatingly long, though Theo wisely keeps that new symptom to himself. Trevor also keeps quiet, until the end. "... No, no, and no. "
"Splendid! Always a good day when the Device works, and two in one day is even better! Now, gentlemen, have you ever wondered what we REALLY do here at OSIRS? "
End Scene
Last edited by Mythrandil; Aug 4th, 2021 at 10:09 AM.
5'10", 150lb, small and lithe of frame, dark-brown wavy hair, brown eyes behind thick-set glasses. Usual dress-code: game meme branded t-shirt (currently 'N7') with blue jeans and black Converse sneakers.
pr073U2 reads the last question on the application. He sees the phrase Dark Tide and fails to suppress a chill down his spine. For a moment he is lost in contemplation as he recalls the day he stumbled upon the edges of this phenomenon in the seedier depths of the Dark Web.
He was looking for dirt on a corrupt shipping conglomerate when he stumbled across classified MPEG-1 video files. He can still recall the sound the creatures made as they streamed through the rip in the very fabric of space. The poor scientists toying with reality never stood a chance as the multi-limbed beings laid waste to the room. Thankfully the video feed ended soon after it begun, but pr073U2 still recalls the face of the creature that stared directly into the lens before it ended.
Snapping back to the present, he briefly taps his answer into the datapad: Coincidentally.
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Your quintessential techy nerd genius who isn't doing it for the money. A man of few words, his abrupt mannerism may be confused with rudeness. But his heart is in the right place.
An alert flashed up on the central screen. pr073U2 looked up from where he was tinkering with his homemade qubits processor. "Open", he says to the wall of displays. An image of a news reporter replaces the alert. Judging by her complexion and the text scrolling along the bottom of the screen, it's from a foreign news channel. pr073U2 sighs, removing the optical AR amplifier from his head. "Translate, volume central", he says again, walking over to the display.
The swelling chorus of Mozart’s Dies Irae recedes into the background as the reporter’s voice fills the room, naturally changing from her own language into one he understands. pr073U2 ignores her, and smiles at the message scrolling along the bottom of the screen. PetroCorp stocks drop 85% with collapse of Chilean pipeline project. Bringing PetroCorp to this point had been simple; a few misdirected shipments and frequent ‘redistribution’ of company funds had paved the way.
"Now for the final nail", he says as he brings his gloved right hand up and starts to make movements in the air, as if conducting an epic orchestral piece. "Release PetroCorp", he concludes with a final swipe to the left, turning back to his worktop at the same time.
Behind him, the newsreader is suddenly replaced by a montage of human violations and environmental destruction, all the direct result of PetroCorp. "Mute, music up", pr073U2 says. He doesn’t need to hear the report that is at this very moment hijacking the airwaves of the 25 countries who have direct dealings with PetroCorp. If the truth isn’t enough, the timed simultaneous release of all PetroCorp’s dealings, both shady and legit, as well as the bricking of every technological device owned by PetroCorp via a non-traceable, self-destructing bot would ensure that PetroCorp would be no more by the end of the week.
Before the final chord on Mozart’s short piece concludes, pr073U2 has already forgotten about PetroCorp and its demise. He’s always been like this: identify a problem, fix it, move on. That’s why he gravitated toward technology growing up; there was always a solution.
Unlike humans.
There was no solution for the human condition. Hubris had infiltrated every level of society, its rot permeating through the fabric of civilisation. Despite his best attempts over the years to remove this rot, it just kept coming back. That’s where he landed on his name: Proteus - species of pathogenic bacteria found in decomposing animal matter, sewage, and manure. Like that bacteria, pr073U2 thrived in the digital waste of the rot that percolated down through society. And from that digital waste, he inflicted disease that killed the rot at the root. But they always come back; they always do, he thought with some despair.
Heaving a fatalistic sigh at the daunting task ahead of him, pr073U2 puts the AR set back on his head. Instead of the intricate innards of the qubits processor, he is met with a simple message:
pr073U2, you are a hard man to find. We have a proposition that might interest you.
pr073U2 gives a conceding smirk before short, deft movements of his right hand return a message: Proceed.
Last edited by tomthumb; Jul 13th, 2021 at 09:35 AM.
Devlin had been a cop in the Boston PD for a number of years, half of them as a detective. Needless to say, he saw a lot of humanity at its worst. Despite it all, it was not the work that began to eat at his seams, but the futility of it all. Regardless of how many dirtbags he put away, he knew he would be notifying next week about someone they lost. It was a cycle that he could see no way out of, except one: he resigned.
He filed for his private detective's license soon after. Most of the guys on the force didn't get it, but that didn't matter. After he solved his first stalking case, he knew he had made the right decision. Then, after a strange case involving two of the same husbands (don't ask), things continued to become more and more strange. He began to know things that he had no way of knowing and sometimes even what people were thinking. Needless to say it made him a little uncomfortable.
The department had used psychics on occasion before, but this was different. With them there always seemed to be such pomp and circumstance around what they were allegedly divining. With him, it was just instinctual, as though he had opened another sense and he just just...knew.
*OSIRS Notation Start*
File Number: 21-06-20380
Status: Probationary Agent, Second Class
Rank:0
Band:010 01-18
Clearance: Restricted
*OSIRS Notation End*
Devlin Lacroix
BAB9A5-A
Base of Operations
New York
Species
Human
Description
Devlin is a simple man with simple tastes. His clothes are utilitarian and well made, but not flashy. His hair is kept short and he usually has a bit of stubble on his face. Although he comes off as cold and uncaring, this is not completely true, he just doesn't show his emotions well.
"As succinctly but completely as possible, tell us how you came to know about what we call, the Dark Tide."
I couldn't tell you how bad I wanted a smoke, but this definitely seemed like the kind of place that frowned upon that sort of thing. Either way, the question made me laugh.
"That's a really nice name for some really messed up ****. Fine. I was working a missing person's case four years ago. Wife's husband had disappeared without a trace. Cops wanted no part of it. He'd only been missing a day, so they weren't going to bother with it. They gave her my number and I ended up taking the case."
"To be as succinct as possible," I added, trying my best to keep the sarcasm to a minimum, " I ended up finding him in a dingy hotel in a part of town he had no reason to be in. I knew something was...off, the moment I stepped into the room. The air felt heavy, like it does before a storm, ya know? He kept going on that he had tried to kill himself. I tried to talk him down, but then he showed me the body lying on the floor on the far side of the bed. Sure enough, it was an exact likeness of him."
I leaned in a little closer. I guess I was trying to underline the seriousness of the point I was trying to make. "When I say exact, I mean exact. Down to the freckles on his face and the hairs coming out of his nose."
"I couldn't really argue with him after that. I moved the curtain aside to take a look outside and I froze. I'm not going to try to describe to you what I saw, but it certainly motivated me to get the hell out of there. I dragged that poor sop out of the hotel and brought him home."
"The funny thing is, I received a call from his wife a few weeks later. She swore that the man I brought back was not her husband. Makes you wonder if he wasn't."
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A perceptive, adventurously curious, and generally good-hearted rogue who has learned to live off of his wits despite being slightly socially awkward.
Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. - Arthur Conan Doyle
She was good. Too good. Doyle had come across her kind a couple of times before. If you were to say it out loud, other players would probably just shake their heads and agree that it really did seem like she was reading their minds. But they would mean it metaphorically. He watched her microexpressions as other players acted, and adjusted his play while avoiding hands that she stayed in.
It's not like he could hold it against her. He'd do it if he could, right? Sure, it was a stretch. But he couldn't see any other explaination. Whatever it was, telepathy or not, he seemed to have a handle on how to work with people like that around - and wasn't that what really mattered?
After an hour, she collected her robust stack chips to go cash out. That's when he noticed them. A man and a woman who had been playing the slot machines near the poker room entrance got up from their chairs and followed her. His curiosity kicked in. They looked like they had been trained, so he knew that they wouldn't try anything inside. That would cause a fuss. Which meant that he had a few minutes while she waited in line at the cashier's cage. Doyle looked at his watch and muttered, "Shoot! The old lady is gonna kill me!" and hurridly racked his winnings into a chip tray.
She was zipping her purse closed at the cashier's cage when he got in line.
"Hey! You played a good game!"
That caught her attention. She looked at him coldly. She probably thinks I'm going to hit on her. Let's hope she recognizes this as professional courtesy.
With a wink and a smile, he simply stated, "I think your friends are looking for you," and pointed to the couple loitering by the cash machine.
She paled and turned back to the cashier, leaning in close enough to talk to her in quiet tones. After a moment, he heard the cashier say, "Of course, Miss. We can have someone escort you to your car."
The couple by the cash machine moved to the entrance of the coffee shop and glared at Doyle. Ok. Maybe that wasn't the smartest thing I've ever done.
Doyle meandered through the casino until he was sure everyone involved had left, then slipped into the elevator. He wasn't sure what he had just interrupted but he was pretty sure he wanted to grab his travel bag and move on. He jabbed the button for the twelfth floor and the elevator began to move. Down. Doyle jabbed the twelfth floor button again.
The doors slid open on the bottom floor of the parking garage. A pair of athletic men in business casual attire rushed in before he could even swing and pinned Doyle to the back wall of the elevator. As he struggled to slip free, a woman in a charcoal pantsuit stepped into the elevator
"Mr Curry, let's talk."
Last edited by savoylen; Feb 6th, 2022 at 02:19 AM.
Reason: more minor tweaks
- Provides +3 END until the benefit is used or 1 hour has passed.Blood Rune Ward
1
- A divination that gives best course of action out of a number of requested options - At that moment.Runic Vision
3
- This rune is a command to sleep. The victim needs to be within 30 meters. The victim is entitled to a END or INT opposed check to resist the command. Sleep Thorn
2
- Spirit of the lands appear to dance around the caster of this rune. This area around caster grants a -2 cover bonus resistance to attacks to which he can defend. If the caster takes damage during the duration of this rune which is 2 rounds, he must make a INT 8+ or the rune fails.Landvættir (Guardian Spirit)
GEAR
Mk14 Enhanced Battle Rifle/ DMR/assault weapon. Raging Judge heavy revolver. Tac vest with carbon fiber plate holder front, back, and side panels. (Not normally worn). Also a "rune enhanced" entrenching tool in a sheath.(Also, Not normally worn) Temporary Gear SMG/ Combat Knife/
Character Notes:
Well, yea I've got some difficulties. That's part of why I'm here. I know I'm not crazy, but I've fought a bitch that looked like a tree and tossed fire, and I've been manipulated by supernatural tricksters. I believe in elves, dwarves, eldritch powers and magick among other things. But I ain't nuts. And yea I've survived things that might kill most folks. That wasn't my imagination either. I figure you people can probably use me without taking me apart to see how I tick. I can't say as much for some of the other alphabet agencies out there. What do I mean by that? Look we both know your little tests pointed out an oddity or two. Let's just say some of the people in power that I've talked to would be more likely to want to dissect a guy rather than let him use his skills. So we got a deal? I help you with stuff, you help me stay off any radar that might get my bits and pieces removed by guys in lab coats?