Alright, the final
update for Ikuya is up, and we're moving on.
Fader
[sblock]
STR 10
DEX 11
CON 13
INT 12
WILL 13
PER 7
Durability: 13/13/7/7
Speed: Sprint 24, run 16, walk 6
Reaction Score: Good/3
Attacks
Unarmed 12/6/3
Pistol 14/7/3
Fuse 16/8/4
Defenses
+1 resistance modifier vs. melee attacks
+2 resistance modifier vs. ranged attacks
+3 resistance modifier vs. INT and WIL encounter skills
Skills
Athletics [10]-Climb [12], Jump [12]; Unarmed [10]-brawl [12]; Stamina [13]-endurance [14]; Movement [13]-swim [14]; Modern [11]-pistol [14]; Stealth [11]-hide [12], shadow [12]; Vehicle Op [11]; Knowledge [12]-computer op [15]; Physical Science [12]-physics [18]; System Op [12]-engineering [14]; Awareness [13]-intuition [14]; Investigate [13]-interrogate [14], search [14]; Lore [13]-fringe science [19], UFO [15]; Resolve [13]-physical [14], mental [16]
FX Skills
Dimensional Science-dimension walk [14], fade [18], fuse [16]
In the summer of 1943, the nations of the world were engaged in the most titanic conflagration wrought by humankind - the Second World War. In the search for a decisive advantage, scientists on both sides worked feverishly to bring newer and more deadly weapons to the battlefield. "Project Rainbow" was one such program - an attempt to employ the principles set forth in Einstein's incomplete Unified Field Theory to render ships or planes invisible to radar. The project later became much better known to history as the Philadelphia Experiment.
Under the direction of Dr. John von Neumann and the eccentric genius Nikola Tesla, the scientists and engineers of Project Rainbow appropriated for their experiments the USS
Eldridge (DE-173), a newly constructed destroyer escort then fitting out at the Philadelphia Naval Yard. The
Eldridge's gun turrets were removed and replaced with massive generators, and the entire ship was wrapped in magnetic coils. On October 18, 1943, the
Eldridge went to sea for the final operational test of the Rainbow equipment installation.
At 5:15 P.M., three electrician's mates threw the switches that powered the mammoth field coils. A green cloud of mist formed around the
Eldridge, and the ship grew transparent. Moments later, it vanished completely in a blinding blue flash. To the observers on the command and support ships stationed nearby, the small destroyer was simply gone...although eyewitnesses at the Norfolk Naval Base, almost 200 miles away, later claimed that the
Eldridge appeared out of nowhere and remained for several minutes before vanishing again.
When the Eldridge returned, it was clear that Project Rainbow had far exceeded the expected results. By accident or design, U.S. scientists had breached the walls of time and space, catapulting the ship hundreds of miles in the blink of an eye. But the experiment was deemed a failure because the effects on the crew were extraordinary and horrible.
Most men on board - the lucky ones - simply went irrevocably insane, and spent the rest of the war confined in a special ward of the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. Others were burned terribly both inside and out, in a manner reminiscent of spontaneous human combustion. A few simply vanished from the ship altogether, and did not return when the
Eldridge came back from wherever it had gone to. And, most horrible of all, some men were actually
fused into the steel superstructure of the ship when the
Eldridge reappeared.
The small number of crewmen who survived the experience with mind and body more or less intact didn't escape the effects altogether. These sailors displayed a peculiar tendencies to simply fade out of existence weeks or months after the experiment had taken place. Two men caught in a barroom brawl in Philadelphia vanished into thin air in the sight of a dozen witnesses, never to be seen again. Another man was seen to walk through a wall and vanish, likewise never to be seen again. There are, of course, hundreds of men living today who served on board the
USS Eldridge later in the war - but no one aboard the ship on October 28, 1943, is alive and sane today.
The Office of Naval Research has a nice form letter called OI-511 that denies that any of this ever took place. But it doesn't explain why the
Eldridge's logs from July to December 1943 are missing.
Description
On the outside, a fader looks just like any other human; they were once human, after all, and the only real difference between a fader and a human lies in the mind and personality. The fader's human persona has been completely compromised or replaced by an alien intellect from some distant reach of space. They don't speak much, and are often perceived as sullen, expressionless, or apathetic.
Faders seem to "download" memories and learning from the people they've replaced, so they are familiar with the details of the person's life and society. But they are cold, ruthless, and brilliant imitations of the person they used to be. There's on more thing about faders: they don't age, at least not the way most people do. Every fader in existence looks exactly like its body did in 1943.
Encounter
A fader sticks to its cover identity unless threatened with imminent violence or confinement. That means that a fader spends most of its time looking, acting, and reacting like an extremely withdrawn or quietly hostile human being. They don't use two words when one word will do. If confronted by a small number of enemies, the fader may strike back with all of its formidable powers, seeking to silence them forever. Against overwhelming odds or in difficult situations, the fader simply leaves using its paranormal abilities.
When a fader is not protecting its cover identity or trying to fit in to human society, it moves quickly and ruthlessly to neutralize opponents in the most efficient manner possible. A fader breaking into a power plant simply fades past the guards....and murders anyone who happens to stumble across it while it's doing its work. Again, when a fader decides that a situation is irretrievable, it uses its powers to vanish instead of risking capture or incapacitation.
Faders may make use of human weapons and tactics, but they don't arm themselves unless it fits the cover identity or they don't care who sees them. In a fight, a fader is much more likely to rely on its Dimensional Science FX skills in order to neutralize or escape its foes as quickly as possible.
Habitat/Society
Faders come to our world through doorways, portals, dimensional gates, or conditions resembling those devices. Whether they meant to or not, the scientists of Project Rainbow stumbled upon the means of creating a doorway and managed to send (at best count) 120 human beings into a place where they don't belong. What they got back in return were a hundred or so lunatics, ten or twelve corpses, and about a half-dozen faders - human beings possessed by alien intelligences.
Faders are driven by two primary motivations. First, they require electromagnetic fields for sustenance. While they are physiologically human, the alien intelligence that is imprinted over the human mind seems to require EM energy to stay alive. Faders even raid power stations, electrical plants, radar stations, and TV or radio towers in an emergency. However, most prefer to establish a cover identity that allows them access to EM energy on a routine basis. Therefore, faders may pose as engineers, linemen, technicians, or scientists. Sometimes, faders may instead sell their technical knowledge in the private sector and use their fortunes to create private power plants or stations where they can indulge their hunger at will. An eccentric millionaire whose desert retreat includes hundreds of acres of windmill generators might be a fader lying low in his stronghold.
Other faders work with the government, exchanging their knowledge of technology for facilities and funds suitable for their work. Some of these individuals were involved in the secret experiments at the Montauk radar station from the mid-59s until the mid-80s, dabbling in teleportation, time travel, broadcast power, and other phenomena. No one knows how many faders there are. About six to ten of the Eldridge's crew and technicians aboard the ship on the day of the test are current unaccounted for *(the uncertainty stems from the question of exactly how many technicians were on board when the generators were started). There may be more faders, especially if rumors about the Air Force's Project Montauk or similar Soviet experiments are true.
Adventure Hook
Several security guards at a corporate-sponsored high-energy physics laboratory are found dead, fused into the steel walls of the underground facility. Security videos show a ghostly figure walking through walls and then solidifying into a normal-looking man, who then sabotages the facility. The lab director calls the Hoffman Institute to investigate the paranormal assault. But by the time the heroes reach the facility, the lab director is on a leave of absence, and the new director politely refuses the heroes' assistance. Who really destroyed the collider, why was the former director dismissed, and who's trying to suppress the story now?[/sblock]
Amusingly enough, this creature's supernatural abilities will be the easiest to convert when we get to that section, since the Montauk Monster shares all of its supernatural abilities and already has a d20 Modern incarnation.
But before that, we need to decide some things to get started. While the fader's ability scores are relatively high (Str 14, Dex 15, Con 17, Int 16, Wis 17, and Cha 8 when converted to d20 Modern scores), they are augmented humans. So, we could either work on these as a creature that can take class levels or a template for humanoids. What's the opinion on this matter?
