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beccaelizabethSo I dreamed I was a six foot tall black hermaphrodite with scarred face and gappy teeth and very tall hair. In prison. In a futuristic dystopia.
So that was different.
Also ze had psychic powers that manifested as exhaling clouds of shadow. To charge them up ze had to have sex. It wasn't about the physical act, it was about the emotional tumult. Some people's powers could take energy from fighting or similar instead, but that had a whole impact on the kind of people they were. Being sex powered was a lot more friendly. Or at least could be.
The shadow clouds had three different levels of effect. Easiest is emotional, then sensory, then acutal physical effects. You have to be very, very good to get anything physical. The effects available are all basically about sex. So the emotions projected could involve pleasure and desire and relaxation, but also fear and boredom, depending. (It's not necessarily about good sex.) Similarly the illusions available include being able to loop a little bit of time, use the shadow as a tape loop, because 'repetitive' is also available. Which is useful for covering cameras and fooling guards. Ze can breathe out a film of shadow to cover a doorway, so if a guard comes through they get wrapped up in it, and experience only boredom and a vague good feeling about the world. It's a trap with a limited target and a reset time: people can walk out of that door without tripping the trap, and the time it takes for the door to swing closed again is how long the trap is unready. The camera thing takes a niggly long concentration to maintain. And it's pretty easy to run out of power.
As to physical effects... nobody can think of any ze's ever done. But ze is a tall muscular hermaphrodite. With skin that looks a whole lot like the shadow breath. Is it all original equipment? Ze just grins.
In an emergency ze can manifest restraints, but they're not very strong. Grabbing someone is about the same strength. The shadow wrap is more useful on other levels.
The other parts of this power are perceptual. As well as an empathic sense that feels good when it can grab something to feed the power and uncomfortable when it's an unrelated sort, there's what the others would call hallucinations, and the shadowmancer calls shades. Ghosts, but not of the dead. Emotional resonances dancing in the spaces they once lived.
There's a whole hell of a lot of them in this place.
The future dystopia has two main rooms for prisoners, and a third that nobody wants to need. One is pre-psych, one is post-psych, and the third is the physical med place, mostly for trauma. People who go in there don't have great odds on coming back, to either ward. In the Pre ward you get all sorts, jittery people, new admissions, every kind of criminal. There's lots of individual cells in there, work rooms to keep them busy, looks more like a prison. Then they go for Treatment. And then they stay in the Post room for a while, usually just long enough to see if it took and they're good little citizens again. There's a lot of people in the Post room, great big barracks room with beds in neat lines, but mostly they don't have personalities any more, so it's a pretty quiet place. New admissions get the last bed in the row, then get moved along so there's no gaps after people get sent out. It ends up concentrating the long stay people near the 'in' door. Our shadowmancer? Is first bed on the left.
Ze has been there a very, very long time.
The psych people try and fix zir head, but ze just tells them they're defining things wrong and goes back to being zir same old self. The psychs can't figure out why. So they just warehouse zir until they come up with another bright idea.
The night before yet another treatment ze hooks up with Vila Restal. (Yes, Vila from Blakes 7, looking like usual.) Very risky, discovery leading to penalties, but they're both about to go in for mindwipe so why worry? But they do worry, and it's a right emotional storm as a result. Lovely little charge up for the shadowmancer. And despite the low supervision and mixed rooms sex is rare in there, mostly because of the repression drugs mixed in with everything, probably even the air. The drugs effect the staff as well as the inmates, as listening to gossip proves out. Only the newbies date or expect to date, the rest of them just do the work and lose animation by the day. So someone so close to treatment, been there so long already, but still interested? Rare and wonderful. But the next day still happens.
The treatment for zir goes about as well as usual, that is bounces right off - being able to shadow one's own mind makes it just a bit difficult to be manipulated from outside. But for Vila it seems to work this time. (It'll wear off, we know, but ze doesn't.) So he turns up in the Post room all zombied out and blank, and not responding to advances in any way shape or form any more. Worse though is despite the enthusiastic connection the night before he's just kind of puzzled about zir now. Actually asks 'what are you' and stuff. Like most of the remade, only standardised categories must apply. Which pisses off the shadowmancer so ze decides to let rip for once. Instead of storing all the power for slow release ze'll do a bunch of splashy spectacular and stir up the others. Given the focus of zir powers the word for this is not 'riot'. Much more fun than that.
... until the door trap doesn't swing to in time, the guards walk in, and people get arrested and beat up. Big nasty then. Some of them even end up in the physical medicine ward.
And when they come out they've gone completely berserk.
Only two get back, but once they're both in the room they go for each other like pit bulls, totally concentrated violence, no logic or indeed evidence of thought. The Shadowmancer attempts to restrain one while their friends grab the other, but ze gets broken toes for zir trouble. So it's off past the mystery door.
Around then things get weird for a bit and slide into being a Doctor Who thing. With Daleks and a lot of the Doctor. Well, parts of him.
Waiting for pain meds and complaining a lot the shadowmancer gets given a wheelchair and pointed to where ze can see a doctor. It's a big wide curving ramp, very accessible looking, very handy. Only after ze's been going down a while does ze realise the slope is not as gentle as it looks, and the chair is going ridiculous speeds. Hanging on to try and slow it just hurts zir hands, so a big long out of control swoop leaves zir crashed out down what turns out to be the rabbit hole. Very deeply weird place. And there's doctors here all right, lots and lots of the Doctor. Two of the 6th Doctor are mostly preoccupied with each other: one in a homicidal rage, the other in a suicidal slump. They feed each other's needs rather, like Cain and Abel in Dream's realm. One of the 5th Doctor just stands around watching as all sorts of terrible things go on around him; one of the 8th keeps asking him questions and forgetting the answers almost right away. They're two versions that watched the Master die, 5 by fire and 8 by the Eye. All these Doctors are splinters of himself, parts he can't or won't make fit in, times he was out of character somehow and will not integrate. But how did they all get to be wandering around as 3D forms?
One of the less preoccupied 6th Doctors greets the shadowmancer in passing and asks what ze knows about 4D psychic projections. Shadowmancer knows quite a lot, having used them all zir life. They take psychic energy, usually from a specific emotion or group of emotions, and turn it into matter. The Doctor says that's 3D, though shadowmancer objects and says it's hardly a still image so it exists in time as well. The Doctor looks grudging but nods to that, then says that's not what he was referring to. Shadowmancer takes another guess, says then he means projections where the psychic energy that formed them may not have happened yet, effects with the causes yet to come. Like shades of the future, or a shockwave before the bomb.
Now the Doctor actually looks at the shadowmancer like his brain is looking too, and a number of his other fragments become interested. This isn't just another loud unfortunate, this is someone they might be able to work with.
And that's about when the Daleks come. And a wave of fear and rage comes with them.
Shadowmancer backs into the wall... and feels the wall becoming more solid behind zir, feeding on the dark side emotions.
The whole place is a prison, not for the humans they sometimes toss down there injured and afraid, but for Daleks. It's a prison constructed of psychic energy, becoming stronger the more the Daleks hate and rage, reinforced by the random fear and pain of the humans they take in and eventually kill. It's a relic of the Time War, and nobody has ever heard of it. Because nobody ever gets out.
The Doctor, all his many parts and pieces, is something like a psychic duplicate, as much a creation as the walls and floor, all meant to keep the Daleks trapped. The makers, whoever and whenever they were, used him as a template, with a level of data that should only be available to the Time Lords. But they didn't use it well. Instead of a single overseer they got fragmented parts, the dark side feelings the structure feeds on calling out the dark sides of the one they meant to control it. Not in a single self hating lump, but in frozen fragments of highly emotional moments, shades made flesh, and all rejecting each other. They got a mosaic of the Doctor's darkest moments, and threw all those Daleks at him. They made, in short, a circle of hell, specifically designed for these particular prisoners.
Shadowmancer is horrified. Because ze knows Daleks. They don't just use squiggly tentacles to control those shells, they use psychokinesis. They've got rudimentary psychic powers. What if, rather than feeding this place, they learn to control it? They'd make a moving nightmare, a hell that could go out and grab more victims.
And the longer the place runs the stronger it gets. And the more minds that feed it the smarter it gets. And one of the problems the Doctor is working is if it's all paradoxical - does the place set out to create itself? And if so do they even have any options, could they even unmake it before the moment of it's causation? But if they do, oh, the number of lives and minds they could be saving... possibly even the Doctor's own. The fragments are copies, but what happened to the original? The Time Lords could have the recording of him, but a great many people could simply have captured the Doctor...
So the Shadowmancer needs to help the Doctor pull himself together, and together change the nature of this place.
... yes, this does logically and inevitably lead to 'and then there was sex'.
... unfortunately it probably leads to 'and then there was Dalek sex', and really, who wants to go there?
... there's almost certainly someone. I don't think I want to know.
xposted from Dreamwidth here.
comments. Reply there
So that was different.
Also ze had psychic powers that manifested as exhaling clouds of shadow. To charge them up ze had to have sex. It wasn't about the physical act, it was about the emotional tumult. Some people's powers could take energy from fighting or similar instead, but that had a whole impact on the kind of people they were. Being sex powered was a lot more friendly. Or at least could be.
The shadow clouds had three different levels of effect. Easiest is emotional, then sensory, then acutal physical effects. You have to be very, very good to get anything physical. The effects available are all basically about sex. So the emotions projected could involve pleasure and desire and relaxation, but also fear and boredom, depending. (It's not necessarily about good sex.) Similarly the illusions available include being able to loop a little bit of time, use the shadow as a tape loop, because 'repetitive' is also available. Which is useful for covering cameras and fooling guards. Ze can breathe out a film of shadow to cover a doorway, so if a guard comes through they get wrapped up in it, and experience only boredom and a vague good feeling about the world. It's a trap with a limited target and a reset time: people can walk out of that door without tripping the trap, and the time it takes for the door to swing closed again is how long the trap is unready. The camera thing takes a niggly long concentration to maintain. And it's pretty easy to run out of power.
As to physical effects... nobody can think of any ze's ever done. But ze is a tall muscular hermaphrodite. With skin that looks a whole lot like the shadow breath. Is it all original equipment? Ze just grins.
In an emergency ze can manifest restraints, but they're not very strong. Grabbing someone is about the same strength. The shadow wrap is more useful on other levels.
The other parts of this power are perceptual. As well as an empathic sense that feels good when it can grab something to feed the power and uncomfortable when it's an unrelated sort, there's what the others would call hallucinations, and the shadowmancer calls shades. Ghosts, but not of the dead. Emotional resonances dancing in the spaces they once lived.
There's a whole hell of a lot of them in this place.
The future dystopia has two main rooms for prisoners, and a third that nobody wants to need. One is pre-psych, one is post-psych, and the third is the physical med place, mostly for trauma. People who go in there don't have great odds on coming back, to either ward. In the Pre ward you get all sorts, jittery people, new admissions, every kind of criminal. There's lots of individual cells in there, work rooms to keep them busy, looks more like a prison. Then they go for Treatment. And then they stay in the Post room for a while, usually just long enough to see if it took and they're good little citizens again. There's a lot of people in the Post room, great big barracks room with beds in neat lines, but mostly they don't have personalities any more, so it's a pretty quiet place. New admissions get the last bed in the row, then get moved along so there's no gaps after people get sent out. It ends up concentrating the long stay people near the 'in' door. Our shadowmancer? Is first bed on the left.
Ze has been there a very, very long time.
The psych people try and fix zir head, but ze just tells them they're defining things wrong and goes back to being zir same old self. The psychs can't figure out why. So they just warehouse zir until they come up with another bright idea.
The night before yet another treatment ze hooks up with Vila Restal. (Yes, Vila from Blakes 7, looking like usual.) Very risky, discovery leading to penalties, but they're both about to go in for mindwipe so why worry? But they do worry, and it's a right emotional storm as a result. Lovely little charge up for the shadowmancer. And despite the low supervision and mixed rooms sex is rare in there, mostly because of the repression drugs mixed in with everything, probably even the air. The drugs effect the staff as well as the inmates, as listening to gossip proves out. Only the newbies date or expect to date, the rest of them just do the work and lose animation by the day. So someone so close to treatment, been there so long already, but still interested? Rare and wonderful. But the next day still happens.
The treatment for zir goes about as well as usual, that is bounces right off - being able to shadow one's own mind makes it just a bit difficult to be manipulated from outside. But for Vila it seems to work this time. (It'll wear off, we know, but ze doesn't.) So he turns up in the Post room all zombied out and blank, and not responding to advances in any way shape or form any more. Worse though is despite the enthusiastic connection the night before he's just kind of puzzled about zir now. Actually asks 'what are you' and stuff. Like most of the remade, only standardised categories must apply. Which pisses off the shadowmancer so ze decides to let rip for once. Instead of storing all the power for slow release ze'll do a bunch of splashy spectacular and stir up the others. Given the focus of zir powers the word for this is not 'riot'. Much more fun than that.
... until the door trap doesn't swing to in time, the guards walk in, and people get arrested and beat up. Big nasty then. Some of them even end up in the physical medicine ward.
And when they come out they've gone completely berserk.
Only two get back, but once they're both in the room they go for each other like pit bulls, totally concentrated violence, no logic or indeed evidence of thought. The Shadowmancer attempts to restrain one while their friends grab the other, but ze gets broken toes for zir trouble. So it's off past the mystery door.
Around then things get weird for a bit and slide into being a Doctor Who thing. With Daleks and a lot of the Doctor. Well, parts of him.
Waiting for pain meds and complaining a lot the shadowmancer gets given a wheelchair and pointed to where ze can see a doctor. It's a big wide curving ramp, very accessible looking, very handy. Only after ze's been going down a while does ze realise the slope is not as gentle as it looks, and the chair is going ridiculous speeds. Hanging on to try and slow it just hurts zir hands, so a big long out of control swoop leaves zir crashed out down what turns out to be the rabbit hole. Very deeply weird place. And there's doctors here all right, lots and lots of the Doctor. Two of the 6th Doctor are mostly preoccupied with each other: one in a homicidal rage, the other in a suicidal slump. They feed each other's needs rather, like Cain and Abel in Dream's realm. One of the 5th Doctor just stands around watching as all sorts of terrible things go on around him; one of the 8th keeps asking him questions and forgetting the answers almost right away. They're two versions that watched the Master die, 5 by fire and 8 by the Eye. All these Doctors are splinters of himself, parts he can't or won't make fit in, times he was out of character somehow and will not integrate. But how did they all get to be wandering around as 3D forms?
One of the less preoccupied 6th Doctors greets the shadowmancer in passing and asks what ze knows about 4D psychic projections. Shadowmancer knows quite a lot, having used them all zir life. They take psychic energy, usually from a specific emotion or group of emotions, and turn it into matter. The Doctor says that's 3D, though shadowmancer objects and says it's hardly a still image so it exists in time as well. The Doctor looks grudging but nods to that, then says that's not what he was referring to. Shadowmancer takes another guess, says then he means projections where the psychic energy that formed them may not have happened yet, effects with the causes yet to come. Like shades of the future, or a shockwave before the bomb.
Now the Doctor actually looks at the shadowmancer like his brain is looking too, and a number of his other fragments become interested. This isn't just another loud unfortunate, this is someone they might be able to work with.
And that's about when the Daleks come. And a wave of fear and rage comes with them.
Shadowmancer backs into the wall... and feels the wall becoming more solid behind zir, feeding on the dark side emotions.
The whole place is a prison, not for the humans they sometimes toss down there injured and afraid, but for Daleks. It's a prison constructed of psychic energy, becoming stronger the more the Daleks hate and rage, reinforced by the random fear and pain of the humans they take in and eventually kill. It's a relic of the Time War, and nobody has ever heard of it. Because nobody ever gets out.
The Doctor, all his many parts and pieces, is something like a psychic duplicate, as much a creation as the walls and floor, all meant to keep the Daleks trapped. The makers, whoever and whenever they were, used him as a template, with a level of data that should only be available to the Time Lords. But they didn't use it well. Instead of a single overseer they got fragmented parts, the dark side feelings the structure feeds on calling out the dark sides of the one they meant to control it. Not in a single self hating lump, but in frozen fragments of highly emotional moments, shades made flesh, and all rejecting each other. They got a mosaic of the Doctor's darkest moments, and threw all those Daleks at him. They made, in short, a circle of hell, specifically designed for these particular prisoners.
Shadowmancer is horrified. Because ze knows Daleks. They don't just use squiggly tentacles to control those shells, they use psychokinesis. They've got rudimentary psychic powers. What if, rather than feeding this place, they learn to control it? They'd make a moving nightmare, a hell that could go out and grab more victims.
And the longer the place runs the stronger it gets. And the more minds that feed it the smarter it gets. And one of the problems the Doctor is working is if it's all paradoxical - does the place set out to create itself? And if so do they even have any options, could they even unmake it before the moment of it's causation? But if they do, oh, the number of lives and minds they could be saving... possibly even the Doctor's own. The fragments are copies, but what happened to the original? The Time Lords could have the recording of him, but a great many people could simply have captured the Doctor...
So the Shadowmancer needs to help the Doctor pull himself together, and together change the nature of this place.
... yes, this does logically and inevitably lead to 'and then there was sex'.
... unfortunately it probably leads to 'and then there was Dalek sex', and really, who wants to go there?
... there's almost certainly someone. I don't think I want to know.
xposted from Dreamwidth here.
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Date: 2010-10-04 06:59 pm (UTC)