fappingtoyourpost
Not too sore, are you?
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- Jan 16, 2015
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Should be consciousness. Conscious is an adjective.
Never mind, clicked the link and saw it was a song quote.
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Uh...My best friend from high school killed himself with a shotgun like that. He was paralyzed from mid chest down from a wreck and generally pretty depressed anyway. He used one of his reachy squeezy claw grabber sticks to push the trigger away from him. Humans are a tool using species after all.
No. He traded that in for his empathic vision.
Doable solo, but seriously, not easy to manage. Instant yellow flag there.
That's only if you use well-understood, repeatable techniques like technology. If you useWasn't there recent Grayven stuff that indicated that if you induce telepathy in humans, you're gonna have a bad time?
technically the murderer was Hera. she hijacked his body whilst he was asleep and used it to murder his entire family/ drove him temporally insane,goaded him into attacking them, then fudged his memory afterwards (though the outcome/intent was identical- He wasn't responsible), because she was canonically a sadistic, petty, gutless wonder who took her frustrations out on her husband's victims >.<IIRC the Twelve Labors of Hercules happened because Hercules got enslaved to a king for 12 years as punishment for murdering his wife. It seems plausible that an analogous situation with Paul would involve Zeus just flat-up telling Paul to work for Wonder Woman or Queen Hyppolyta for 12 years or something.
technically, that's artifically inducing it in adults- i think he said something about the changes being easier/much safer in children/genetically done before conception...Wasn't there recent Grayven stuff that indicated that if you induce telepathy in humans, you're gonna have a bad time?
Fun fact: one time, after Hercules flipped out and killed a guy, the local queen sentenced him to spending a year as her personal slave as his punishment. She promptly forced him to crossdress and perform women's work, while going around wearing his armor and carrying his weapons. After the year was over, he promptly married her.
So close. I hope they get backup from the Sivana family and blow this situation up."Yeah." Beryl sounds thoughtful. "Probably worth eliminating them from out enquiries. How hard would it be to get a way to detect them?"
"I didn't scan the device. I'll have to ask Magnificus if we can borrow it. If he's not too busy, maybe a few minutes." I nod. "I'll go and ask."
So, like many, many small towns before the advent of the Automobile and the Freeway.I watch the cars as they shoot past on the way to somewhere with a lower suicide rate.
"…founded in nineteen twenty two. Before that, it was basically just a train station and refuelling point."
Significant, if off-topic for the suicides."And the deaths?"
"As far as I can tell, it's always been like this. There were 'unexplained deaths' back to the founding. Before that, actually. In eighteen seventy, a train arrived in the next station along with its whole crew dead. According to the story I found, it looked like they'd been partially eaten."
Unless they were bulletproof or mystical, not likely..."Wolves?"
"Getting on a moving train? Crewed by Americans with guns?"
So he's only seeing a minor unrelated thing. Oh, is his everything going to be red when he realises what's going on..."Anything before that?"
"Nothing that made the papers. But that was fifty years before there officially a town here. They don't have all of the issues. You find anything?"
"One telepath with antisocial tendencies. But he's not a hundred and forty years old, and as far as I could see didn't want people dead."
Well, that was a letdown. I hope something gets them on the right trail..."How 'antisocial' are we talking, here?"
"I couldn't see any desires relating to other people at all."
So the tendency towards megalomania, criminal tendencies and/or vigilantism are a benefit to identification? Only in comic books..."I've been trying to read up to human telepaths, but there aren't really any good studies."
"The best estimate I saw was that there are probably about a thousand people with some level of telepathic ability on Earth, of whom maybe a tenth are decent generalist telepaths. But that's extrapolated from a relatively small sample, and… Well, by definition, police can only study failed criminals. If a powerful, competent telepath didn't want to be noticed, they wouldn't be."
Possible witness? That's one way of thinking about it."So what do we do about him?"
"I'll tell Mister King when we're finished, ask him to do a home visit. He didn't exactly sound happy, but if he's managed this long then I doubt we need to prioritise him."
"Unless he know something. If he's been hearing people's thoughts since puberty -or longer- then there's a chance that he's been around some of the… Victims? Is that the word?"
Honestly, given the likely cause, Magic is probably not going to find anything useful..."If something external to them is causing it, yes. And.. that might explain his unusual behaviour. He did say that one of the victims was one of his classmates. But even Mister King ended up in an asylum. There's plenty of opportunity for telepathy to cause neurosis without external assistance."
I look over to where Garth is finishing up. Since we're out of sight of the townsfolk he's taking the opportunity to draw out a runic working on the ground. He spots me looking at him and shakes his head as he rubs his foot on the ground to erase the physical traces of it. Darn. Given the number of people who had killed themselves around here I'd hoped that we'd get something beyond the road signs referencing the figure and pleading people to drive carefully.
Interesting that they just shut down. The influence malfunctioning without instructions?"Have you found any links between the victims?"
"No statistically significant family links, geographic links, ethnicity, religion… The age thing looks like it should be significant, but I can't work out why."
"Any survivors?"
"A few. Most of them sort of shut down, except to have another go. The last one died of malnutrition, over a decade ago." There's a pause. "I think I need a new hobby."
Would they even remember something like that after this long?"Are you finished where you are?"
"I think so, yes."
"Do you think you could speak to the family of that last survivor? See if they said something that didn't mean anything to their caretakers but would mean something to us?"
At least OL knows when to let people work things out by themselves."Leonid and I don't exactly sound American."
"Are you telling me you can't do accents?"
"Eh… Kind of. I can do the voice but I don't know enough about actually being an American to really fake it. I could say I'm an exchange student or something..?"
"Whatever you think best."
So to them, this is looking like a complete waste of time and effort. But that very absence of anything is itself suspicious...Garth reaches convenient speaking distance.
"I got an impression of the deaths, but that's it. I think I'm at a dead end as far as magic-based detection is concerned. Unless we trip over something… You will need to ask someone else if you want to investigate this further with magic."
"Okay. I know this isn't your speciality and I appreciate your efforts so far. Any ideas on another avenue of investigation?"
Would there be records of things like that? Short of some vigilante keeping journals or a newspaper reoprt, there's not much history."I've been trying to work out who would benefit from something like this. I know that there are magic rituals which are powered by death, but as far as I can tell that isn't happening here. There are monsters who eat people who died in particular circumstances, but most of the bodies we have records for were intact."
Beryl 'hms' down the phone. "It can't be Star Conquerors because they don't like drawing attention and killing people they could use as hosts isn't productive. It probably isn't G-Oni because Garth can't detect any magic. It's not the Light because… There's no point to it. It doesn't make heroes look bad because no one really knows that it's happening and it doesn't get them anything. Kobra wouldn't mind being able to cause mass suicides, but they didn't come to America until the thirties. Were there any supervillains around here in the nineteenth century?"
Argh, so close... But assumptions get in the way."At least one werewolf pack, but I couldn't name any members. Other than that… No idea. None I've heard of."
"Sheeda?"
"Sheeda aren't this subtle. And how would they even get here? The ships haven't arrived. A Mind Killer could do something like this, but these are just random teenagers. They're not people would could meaningfully resist a Harrowing. There's no.. motive that I can see."
I would be worried if he did...Garth nods. "Maybe its practice? How would we detect a Mind Killer?"
"The Sivanas have a device that can reveal them, but as I understand it only the person they're trying to effect can see them otherwise."
"What do they look like?"
"A fat humanoid made out of cloud with too many eyes. You're not.. seeing one now, are you?"
That probably comes down to how complex a construct they are..."No." He shakes his head, looking thoughtful. "I take it that they aren't magical?"
"I haven't seen enough Sheeda technology to know. I don't think so."
He glances up to where Linda is flying high above us, her magic sense straining to feel anything untoward in the town. "And they don't have souls?"
The joy of dealing with things from millions of years in the future..."I'm not sure."
"Do they have their own emotions?"
"I didn't see any last time, but there are ways to block me and the Sheeda have had a long time to work at it."
Remind me, Magnificus was freed from Sheeda influence here, wasn't he? Or was that in Renegade's timeline."Yeah." Beryl sounds thoughtful. "Probably worth eliminating them from out enquiries. How hard would it be to get a way to detect them?"
"I didn't scan the device. I'll have to ask Magnificus if we can borrow it. If he's not too busy, maybe a few minutes." I nod. "I'll go and ask."
waitOh, this is painful, like watching someone play a video game badly. When you know exactly what's going on, but you can't do anything to just tell them about it...
it'sGarth nods. "Maybe its practice? How would we detect a Mind Killer?"
Sheeda. This is a storyline where a group of Sheeda crash landed and started affecting the groups around them.wait
people already figure out the plot
can some one spoil me please, i hate not knowing
He was freed in both.Remind me, Magnificus was freed from Sheeda influence here, wasn't he? Or was that in Renegade's timeline.
Paul is too rational. He thinks that the Sheeda would need a visible motive to do things like this.Oh, this is painful, like watching someone play a video game badly. When you know exactly what's going on, but you can't do anything to just tell them about it...
Thank you, corrected.
Spare a thought for Great Uncle Magnanimous Sivana, killed by a Gnu.
Is that canon? It's really hard to tell if you're joking, given some of the stuff that is canon.Spare a thought for Great Uncle Magnanimous Sivana, killed by a Gnu.
He's joking. Grue didn't trigger until the 2000's.Is that canon? It's really hard to tell if you're joking, given some of the stuff that is canon.
He didn't say 'Grue,' though. He said 'a Gnu.'
I thought so. Interestingly enough, wildebeests do have some significance in DC canon.
The Sheeda are time-travellers, right? It could be a Terminator scenario - kill the mother of the leader of the Resistance before he was born to prevent the Resistance from coming into existence."Sheeda aren't this subtle. And how would they even get here? The ships haven't arrived. A Mind Killer could do something like this, but these are just random teenagers. They're not people would could meaningfully resist a Harrowing. There's no.. motive that I can see."
The Sheeda are time-travellers, right? It could be a Terminator scenario - kill the mother of the leader of the Resistance before he was born to prevent the Resistance from coming into existence.
In theory, that's possible. In practice, they're from so far in the future and Harrowings are so devastating that it's not very likely.The Sheeda are time-travellers, right? It could be a Terminator scenario - kill the mother of the leader of the Resistance before he was born to prevent the Resistance from coming into existence.