Fallen Hero - Update 18 December 2016

Hosted Games Works In Progress
1197

I mean we know telepathy is rare and that the Rat king is multiples telephatic rat brain linked togethers, that imply lots of trials-and-errors. Does that mean there were a lab full of boosted rats spitting fire on the scientists and flinging the security guard around with telekinetik powers? Their job must have been hell, How does it even feel to be mind controlled by a rats? etc.

If it true the that the boost drug work on animals how does it affect the setting? is it possible to buy legal or illegal super-powered guard dogs? Is there is a mob boss somewhere with a pet invulnerable teleporting tiger at is command? etc.

I mean, the big downside of the boost drug is that it will probably kill/cripple you, if you can domesticate an animal and then give it the drug some people with little moral qualms must have made it in the past for power or profits right?

6 Likes
1198

I have little doubt that the government would test the drug on animals if they did the same with humans.

Wait, did the government test the drug on humans, causing mass death/power transformation? Or did they round up Boosts, after the drug first hit the market, to observe the Boosts’ powers post-transformation?

4 Likes
1199

Why not both of those?

2 Likes
1200

Good point. The fact that people/companies are given permission by the government to do inhumane shit like that is probably why I have an inherent mistrust of authority/government.

That actually could be a great motivator/backstory/origin story for the MC. I only really skim people’s origin theories on here, that ask stuff like “How did the MC get their powers?”/“Where did MC grow up?”/etc, but some theories that stuck out to me were like that the MC is a Mod, grew up in a lab (like Eleven from Stranger Things), and something like that that explains why telepaths are so rare.

2 Likes
1201

Well the mc seem to have super power like a boost (mod mean you are using avanced tech instead of power) but doesn’t seem to have taken the super power drug like the others boost and have grown up/ have an history with a place called the farm. They seem to be linked to the Re-Gene and special directive so you could very well be right in your theories.

5 Likes
1202

Yep, there is a lot of animal testing going on with the goals of making the booster drugs safer for people and have more predictable results. How are they going?

Well, let’s put it this way, you can’t go out and buy yourself a legal super powered pet, and for every useful dog with super strength or fire breath, there’s ones with weird things like farting pink clouds, or smelling colors.

Take for example dogs. Yes, there are dogs with super powers. Unfortunately, it’s a bit like having a tiger as a pet, it might work well most of the time, but if something goes wrong the consequences are brutal. A lot of things gets funneled into military research, so most of these creatures sees use abroad, not on american soil.

That being said, illegal powered pets are a market, just like illegal weapons. In fact, you will get to meet one in the chapters after the hospital scene, just not the kind of animal you are expecting I think :slight_smile:

In fact I am pretty sure of that.

16 Likes
1203

I was going to say that it seemed weird that you could get boosted pet legally since it’s potentially a powerful weapon and all the implied animal abuse (if the drug is as dangerous for animal than human) but then I remembered that Los Diablos has no regulation.

does that mean that a lot/most of those that have risked their life to become and boost and hasn’t died got useless or near useless power like ‘‘run slightly better’’?

Talking about boost, can I know what Rosie power is?

1204

@Laurence_David - Yeah, there are a lot os smaller powers around. Think of it like athletics. There are a lot of people that can run fast, a lot fewer that can run professionally, and then even fewer that can make it to the olympics.

What makes it even trickier, is where you got the drugs from. For example, if you are a risk taker who feels like it’s all or nothing and wants to be a hero and takes the drugs, chances are if you end up with something lame like talk to fish, they’d save up the money and try again, hoping things will go better. It rarely does.

This also means that there are a lot of hybrids out there, for example people who are boosts, but then has to mod themselves to be competetive. Technically the MC is one such person, getting the armor to be harder and tougher.

The line between boosted and mods is becoming increasingly blurred.

Rosie is strong and durable, but not near Lady Argent levels. She can also (and she does this only when drunk) push things into her skin/flesh to eject them later. Like pushing in a spike, then shooting it out at someone. She has really bad aim though, and it hurts a lot.

Also: Nearly no laws/regulations in Los Diablos when it comes to ethics, environment healt and safety.

10 Likes
1205

So is being a mod more restricted or a lot more costly because it seem to be the safest and most reliable way to be enhanced.

also is their a slang for those who are bot a mod and a boost or are they only called enhanced?

1206

(I started this like an hour ago and ended way off the “Enhanced pets” track, so forgive me for this spoilery, speculative tangent:)

Right, that’s the place I saw mentioned in all those theories, the Farm, which paints a creepy, middle-of-nowhere, Courage the Cowardly Dog kind of picture for me. [spoiler]Except instead of a quaint cottage occupied by an elderly couple and their dog, it’s a government-funded Enhancement factory, using living beings, human and non-human alike, as test monkeys.

Now, what I think is safe to assume is that the difference between Boosts and the people who take the drug and die is a latent gene in their DNA, from which their powers originate, that is activated or enhanced by the drug when taken by someone with that gene (see the effects of the Terrigen crystals/mist in Agents of SHIELD). Based on the fact that the MC is in their early thirties, and these quotes,

“The drug was banned of course, declared an illegal narcotic in 1976.”
“The drugs were undeniably lethal, but the military had been making enhanced humans since Vietnam, and as the research companies moved west in the nineties, the lack of regulations led to new discoveries.”

I’m speculating that the MC’s parents were amongst the first Enhanced during that initial Enhancement Boom in the 70’s, met sometime around then and had the MC during the early to mid-80’s. At least one of their parents had to have been a Boost, in order to pass the Enhancement gene down to their child. Unless powers manifest on their own (without the drug) in people who have a Boost parent(s), maybe the government (but most like a sketchy subsidiary of the actual “government”, because there’s not much in LD) saw potential/money/whatever in the MC when they were born, and took them to test on them as a child and see what would happen essentially. What kind of powers manifest from the child of two Enhanced parents, or even one? I think the MC’s parents even knew what might happen to their child if anyone even knew they had a child, but the MC got kidnapped anyway, and grew up in this “Farm.” And that’s why telepaths are so rare.[/spoiler]

Which is definitely not what this conversation was about but there’s my theory (with conceivably so many holes you might as well call it Swiss cheese).

7 Likes
1207

The problem with mods is that yes, it costs a lot more money, but above all, you also need upkeep and a staff for that. Small things are fine, there are a lot of people with mods that never see themselves as modded, because they’re just handy little transhumanist things.

But the big one, like Ortega’s electricity generation, or full cyborgs or muscle/limb replacements, those require both medical and tech staff to care for.

So, like in racing, you need money or a team to back you. A lot of mods are goverment/military sponsored, belongs to criminal organizations, or various companies. You’re sort of stuck with who had the tech to create you.

Boosts have higher risks, but you are self sufficient if you are lucky. There are methods to take the drugs these days that reduce the risks, but it’s still a minority that gets anything useful from it, it’s russian roulette.

People tends to be called what their most flashy thing is.

8 Likes
1208

Yeah we don’t know much about anything relating the farm but I get very sinister vibe from the name and what little we do know about it.

I don’t have much to add to the theory because I pretty much agree with everything you have said aside that the quote about vietnam may be about mods instead of boost and the peoples who die may die for the opposite reason, mutating too much too quickly to stay alive.

1 Like
1209

Just wondering, you said that the hero drug had 95% mortality rate when it first came out. Has that improved over time or is it still as lethal as ever?

@freelance I got the impression that the MC wasn’t a boost as they mention how Ortega thinks they are a boost, implying this is yet another thing they lied about. Of course that may just be because I’m kinda committed to my Re-Gene theory.

5 Likes
1210

It is better now. Not because of the drug, but because of better ways to deal with the shock it is for the body. Currently the “safest” way to take it is considered to be placed in a medical coma first, with lowered body temperature, and then slowly administer it intravenously.

The cheaper crapshot in the dark things you can buy on the street is actually more lethal, but also tends to get stronger results. This is where a lot of the criminal underworld gets their boosts, there’s always new desperates…

5 Likes
1211

What would happen if the MC forced another booster on Harold? Would there be a chance that he would come up ruined with his prior powers messed up by the new boost?

1212

Most likely. It is NOT considered safe practice. Still, some people do…

3 Likes
1213

So a totally evil MC could keep him spinning the “Russian Roulette” wheel until he crashes and burns… heh… I think my MC would be considering this for her enemies :slight_smile:

1 Like
1214

See, this is how you create your nemesis… because nobody can control how the mutation works… you might just make everything worse :wink:

6 Likes
1215

Ya but a Lady Argent who kept being violated would drive herself crazy being upset people keep entering her mind and forcing her to take boosters … lol.

1216

Yeah, I mostly grabbed that because I thought maybe (in some even weirder scenario), one of the MC’s parents was a Boost and the other a Mod? Idk, when I get into zones like that my ADD is going in several different directions at once while my rational self is trying to follow the one path that I had started on. Tangents within tangents.

Also, I feel like I need to apologize because you and @malinryden got on a really cool track that explained a lot of stuff I wasn’t clear on before, and I just jumped in super late and railroaded your awesome conversation. But on the other hand, this theory (that I essentially thought of as I typed it and rolled with it) is cool yet sloppily-put-together enough that I want people to keep talking about it and building off of it. And yet I wanna keep learning more about the Enhanced world nowadays cuz it just keeps getting cooler the more I learn, and it’s painting a much clearer picture of the Fallen Hero world.

3 Likes