X-COM THINK TANK (Out of Character Discussion about X-COM and the Series)

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Suryce

Suryce

Game Master
I'm kind of late, but here is my participation to the challenge. Since I have already revealed what most of Rebecca's past and future entail, I mixed together a bunch of unused ideas instead to create a more meaningful death for her in a perfect setting where Season 4 didn't end in defeat and Rebecca is the Volunteer.
It took a pretty particular turn when I wrote it, I have no idea if this is good or bad. Maybe I took too much liberties? Also certain things could be developed more I feel, but this is meant to be a one-shot and it's already pretty long.
Anyway, you tell me what you think of it!

Part. 1
The wound ached.

This was the most atrocious scar she had ever got in her life. The cut across her face, with the missing hair and odd-colored eye, was nothing compared to the body horror left by the energy lance that had pierced through the lower part of her torso as if it was butter, while she felt like a shock-wave hitting all of her being, body and mind both. They said it's a miracle she was still alive, and that's probably an appropriate way to call the first medical surgery involving the use of Meld for the repair of a broken body. They weren't able to fully fix her legs though, or whatever they said allowed her to move her legs correctly anyway.

She remembered Ferdinand, her blond hair shining under the light of the operation table while her black suit projected a shadow on Rebecca, asking her if she still wanted to fight. What a foolish question, the soldier answered (though less eloquently than that), and they made her new legs. But not the ones they gave Arsène. Instead, they made an exoskeleton forged with the help of a bit of Meld once again, sticking to the soldier's scarred legs to complement them in place of replacing them. It made noise every time she moved, but she wasn't going to complain.

The sole annoyance was that she needed to adapt to this new system, to re-educate herself to her legs like a child. In that sense, she was still recovering, so she wasn't going to go back to the battlefield before long. Way longer than she would have desired. At least, she could sleep a lot once again, and go back to her long black nights without dreams, with just her and the comforting darkness of nothing.

But since she couldn't go on a mission for the moment, they asked her one more thing: to sit in their pod machine for ten days, to see if she had any "psionic potential". She wasn't sure what they meant, and maybe they didn't really know either, but she obeyed. This was going to slow down her physical therapy, but hey, a sleep of ten days? Sounded like the dream for her. So she sat down and closed her eyes.

Soon, she fell into the darkness, as always, and she rested peacefully for what seemed an eternity. But surely her perception was wrong, as this eternity ended. Suddenly, she wasn't falling anymore, the darkness was close, entrapping her and choking her. She reacted violently, with whatever limbs she had in this dream, and as she was tearing apart the darkness with her hands, she understood for the first time ever that she had always been dreaming.

The black curtain fell and finally she saw what her mind had always hidden from her.

A tall woman with black hair and dark eyes appeared, and for a split second Rebecca thought she was looking at herself. But that woman didn't had any scar, and the smoothness of her skin went well with her pleasant expression as she walked along a peaceful street during sunset. She looked the same as Rebecca, but strangely everything was different, like the lovely white dress she wore, contrasting with the long black hair that Rebecca had cut, or even the way she smiled, of a familial love not born in blood, to the child whose hand she held and from whose eyes Rebecca was seeing the scene.

Rebecca screamed with the rage of a hurt animal as a sudden pain made her close her phantom eyes and grip her head in a convulsive manner, assaulted by too many conflicting memories unlocked at once from the place she had exiled them to. She wanted to throw up but couldn't even open her mouth to breath, all the while trying to not lose sight of who she was, of who she thought she was. In the end, she broke down under the stream, and for one more eternity, she remembered.

When the woman who had called herself Rebecca opened her eyes again, her real eyes, it's the entirety of her being who gazed upon the world. People were quickly bringing her exoskeleton to her, so that she could raise again and walk out of the pod, and once it was attached, she did exactly that but with a grace and confidence void of any of the clumsiness she had still been demonstrating before entering the pod. Her mind apprehended the walking machine with perfection, and without waiting for anyone, without uttering any word, she walked out of the room.

If she was paying no mind to the words spoken to her by the people following her and trying to understand what was going on, that's because she was already too busy listening to the echos of the base. The pain of a soldier in the infirmary, the irritation of an engineer directed at a malfunctioning machine, or even the same focused trance as her from one of the operative in the situation room monitoring suspicious activities. She felt like a child once again, listening to the world and trying to understand it, and before she realized it, she drove herself to exhaustion after a few hours and passed out in the middle of a corridor.
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Suryce

Suryce

Game Master
Part. 2
The next few days were spent testing and judging the new abilities of Rebecca, from her new power to touch the minds of others to her renewed physical agility and strength. It's as if she had surpassed some of the limits of the human being, even compensating for her broken parts, and most of the scientists were thrilled by such a prospect. But for Rebecca, the wound still ached.

Actually it ached way more than before. It was like a thirst, but different from the one she usually felt when she took pleasure in killing. She had absolute knowledge of herself, she remembered every second of her life, she could exploit her body to its maximum capacity at any moment, and yet she still lacked something. Finally, Rebecca was sent into battle again, both because she was fit again much earlier than anticipated and because the research team were eager to see her new power in action in a real situation. It was one of the greatest pleasure of the world to break into the mind of Muton and wreck it, throwing him unto the ground without even touching him, before smashing his head with her own fist for several intense minutes, until way after the creature died, until its skull was mess and her hand covered in blood and bits of flesh, disregarding the bones of her own fingers cracking under the repeated impacts, letting it all loose.

But it didn't satisfied this thirst.

She continued to grow beyond her own expectations and for what felt like just a day later in the ocean of her existence, she stood against an Ethereal once again. Three of them in fact. But Rebecca wasn't a glutton and she focused on the one talking to her, whispering in her mind, how promising her greater things. In that instant, she realized how desperate she was, how enraged she truly was, as she looked upon the most powerful being in the universe and in reaction wondered if he was good enough. Good enough to... to what? Satisfies the thirst? Her desire for revenge? Save herself...? From what? The thirst? The revengeful mindset? This existence?

As she leaped to face the enemy, she finally understood that with every second during which her mind and its power were growing, she was also becoming more of a beast. The perfection of her mental jousting with the Ethereal, of her agility and its precision to make the most optimal move available to her in the infinity of possibilities, of her strength and the confidence it gave her in her mastery of the enormous weapon which tore apart everything in its blast, all of this without any inhibition, any moral, any reason, just to kill. The ultimate power had led her to ultimate freedom, which in turn had led her to the perfect despair of a life without meaning.

The ultimate being is a beast, and all a lone beast who has lost more than everything can do is to kill in a mixture of fear, pleasure and rage.

As she won the battle, her exoskeleton broke down. At the moment she thought she was going to stand at the top of the world, her body reminded her that she was a broken beast. There was no glory, there was not even pleasure anymore, nor fear, the afterglow was a little death. She couldn't feel if the wound was still aching or not. She closed her eyes, she was tired, she would let the others recover her.

But she felt something, still calling her, or maybe she was merely hearing it by happenstance. Rebecca pushed her hand against the grounds, projected the power of her mind unto her own body, and once again she raised. This was not the end, her mind was growing again but it only met the void of space all around. Inside of her own body, the wound was aching again, it was bleeding again. Something was pulling it and tearing it apart. Rebecca lifted her physical eyes upon it, a big, round, purple sphere standing on a pedestal, and what she saw through it was bigger than the world.

Like mosquitoes, the others were getting near her during those few seconds of what had felt to her like taking several minutes to fall and then to raise her body again. She pushed them away, telling them to go away, imprinting the message in their mind with the clearest of meaning that no word could convey. This power was mine and I walked toward it.

She raised both her hands as if to hold the sphere, while her eyes plunged into it and its visions. And for the first time in her life, she cried. Her body jerked into an imperfect start and her nose became full and noisy. "Jeanne," she cried again, as what she saw through the sphere of condensed raw power was possibilities. The unattainable possibility of a normal childhood, with her family, with the neighbor's daughter who had call herself "Jeanne" in another life. But in this possibility, they would have grown without ever needing to abandon their birth names, as the greatest evil of their life would have been the dismissive tone of the people calling their choices and preferences "a phase" during their teenage years, and then of the ethnocentric inhabitants displeased at the sight of their skin-color and culture as they traveled the world during their adult life. Even in the possibilities were the aliens still started their attacks during the year 2015, the couple would find refuge and never lose one another.

An imperfect, yet better life. One not void of hardships, but infinitely more fulfilling. A world in which Rebecca would have grown able to love others with her mind, if not her body, the same way they loved her.

Now realizing the full extent of what she had lost, the beast finally found grief, and in this grief her humanity. She cursed her fate. She cursed the life full of blood that had shaped her the way she was. And finally she found a reason to put an end to it. To this existence and to this power. The power to kill through the mind. The last weapon in a long list, that's all she could do. The only thing she could create with it, was a world without it. She took control of the ship, gaining at the same time perfect knowledge of every piece of it, of every living being still on board, felling the slow moving air in every little cranny of the inside. The engines made a thunderous noise in her ears that could hear everything, and she moved the ship as far she could from the Earth before using all the power to compress the ship to its maximum, smashing every component of it, every creature, every bit of power.

In the last moments, her legs became unable to sustain her, she fell, and realized that her open wound wasn't hurting anymore. She closed her eyes and hoped she could dream forever of this better life.
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Thenlar

Thenlar

Active Member
Long War is in beta 6 right now, and a bit buggy. Beta 7 is supposed to be out soon(tm) and includes a new weapon type (carbines) as well as other tweaks and fixes. I haven't been following it closely myself, that's just info I've gleaned from the XCOM subreddit.

Personally, I'd like to apply for Annette next time around, but if Odd does use Long War, then there'll be a LOT of battles before she ever shows up, so I'd be sitting around waiting for a long time. Even though she shows a pretty distinct personality through her combat chatter (non-military in the slightest), there's still a lot of ways to interpret it, and I really want to put my spin on her character out there. I've got time to think about it, at least, since we still don't know when the next season is coming, anyways.
 
Suryce

Suryce

Game Master
You could always ask Sarge-Pepper if he's going to do Project Progeny in his own run, if you're okay with doing RP on another forum with another commander.
 
Frostlich1228

Frostlich1228

Well-Known Member
I am Thinking Next season we should give our soldiers more permanent injuries when they are Gravely Wounded in battle, Something like a Lost Eye, or a Amputated Arm, Or becoming Deaf In one Ear.

I think that would make your character's Near Death Experiences Mean a little bit more, what do you guys think?
 
BMPixy

BMPixy

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Frostlich1228 said:
I am Thinking Next season we should give our soldiers more permanent injuries when they are Gravely Wounded in battle, Something like a Lost Eye, or a Amputated Arm, Or becoming Deaf In one Ear.

I think that would make your character's Near Death Experiences Mean a little bit more, what do you guys think?
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The thing is, the only penalty for a soldier going critical (which doesn't even cover all instances of grave wounding), is to their Will. And as much as I'd enjoy the prospect of having additional role-play options, it creates a surreal disconnect between the RP and the game where a soldier who lost an eye is shooting with the best of them, unless you give the old hand wave of 'cybernetics'. Also, on top of that, what incentive would XCOM have to keep soldiers with such grievous injuries? From what I know of most military organizations, if you get seriously injured you either get shuffled to the back lines or receive a medical discharge. It is likely rare that the soldier gets some metal welded to them and told to get back out there.

Though Odd could always pull a Robo-cop and augment a soldier who is grievously wounded. Hmmm....
 
ZombieSplitter53

ZombieSplitter53

Game Master
Staff member
BMPixy said:
The thing is, the only penalty for a soldier going critical (which doesn't even cover all instances of grave wounding), is to their Will. And as much as I'd enjoy the prospect of having additional role-play options, it creates a surreal disconnect between the RP and the game where a soldier who lost an eye is shooting with the best of them, unless you give the old hand wave of 'cybernetics'. Also, on top of that, what incentive would XCOM have to keep soldiers with such grievous injuries? From what I know of most military organizations, if you get seriously injured you either get shuffled to the back lines or receive a medical discharge. It is likely rare that the soldier gets some metal welded to them and told to get back out there.

Though Odd could always pull a Robo-cop and augment a soldier who is grievously wounded. Hmmm....
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Of course, with the advances made with bio-engineering and cybernetics in X-COM, there is no reason someone couldn't have a permanent injury and still continue to function at or near 100%. A lost eye can be compensated for with some meld, and lost hand can be replaced with a cybernetic one like Luke Skywalker. Battle-wise, they'd be the same, but on a personal level, they've lost something they can't get back. X-COM might just stick some fancy gizmo on them at minimal cost from their mass-production line and say, "You're fine, it was just a hand. You made a commitment to us, and that contract you signed means that hand belonged to us anyway, and besides, this one's better. You're here to shoot aliens, not play the piano." But to the soldier them-self, they'll never be the same.
Don't get me wrong, I see what you're saying about injuries and medical discharge, but this is a whole different kind of war, and the whole point of X-COM is that these are the greatest soldiers on Earth, or at least the soldiers with the greatest potential, so X-COM wouldn't let them leave if they could come up with some patch work. It sounds cruel, I know, but somehow I doubt if you could ask the creepy G-Man on the monitor with his face darkened out if you're free to leave because your leg was blasted off, 'cause he'd take one look at the cybernetic leg they stuck on you and say, "You look fine to me." Really, your Robocop analogy is the best way to describe it, because OCP owns all of the X-COM soldiers.
"I think we should lose the arm, what do you think Johnson?"
"Well he signed a release form when he joined the force. He's legally dead. We can do pretty much what we want to him."
"Lose the arm."
 
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Adrammalech

Adrammalech

Well-Known Member
Hey, I can see the site again :D I had no idea people could still talk here, I have some catching up to do. I will miss Dr. Borg and his wellness evolutions, though.
 
Taxor_the_First

Taxor_the_First

Well-Known Member
Adrammalech said:
Hey, I can see the site again :D I had no idea people could still talk here, I have some catching up to do. I will miss Dr. Borg and his wellness evolutions, though.
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It was fun while it lasted.
ZombieSplitter53 said:
It sounds cruel, I know, but somehow I doubt if you could ask the creepy G-Man on the monitor with his face darkened out if you're free to leave because your leg was blasted off, 'cause he'd take one look at the cybernetic leg they stuck on you and say, "You look fine to me."
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He'd probably take one look and say "What is this blur of pixels? Get Vahlen working on some new Web Cam technology."
New council mission has been added!
 
Zain Shah

Zain Shah

Well-Known Member
Yeah, it seems like Odd doesn't want to be forced to make decisions around the role-play so gene mods when a soldier is gravely wounded is probably not an option but, like Zombie said, they could put a cybernetic limb in that functions and looks just like a human one as they are supposed to be handpicked from billions of people and X-COM would not just leave them as they are very valuable. It still can be mentioned in the role-play to make things more exciting around base (I did this in season 3 when Zain got scratched by a Chrysalid, he got a scar across his chest).
 
ZombieSplitter53

ZombieSplitter53

Game Master
Staff member
Zain Shah said:
Yeah, it seems like Odd doesn't want to be forced to make decisions around the role-play so gene mods when a soldier is gravely wounded is probably not an option but, like Zombie said, they could put a cybernetic limb in that functions and looks just like a human one as they are supposed to be handpicked from billions of people and X-COM would not just leave them as they are very valuable. It still can be mentioned in the role-play to make things more exciting around base (I did this in season 3 when Zain got scratched by a Chrysalid, he got a scar across his chest).
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Exactly what I was thinking. The meld is necessary to make gene mods and cybernetics with special powers, but they wouldn't need meld for simple biological or mechanical replacements that function the same as normal body parts. Hell, it isn't all that far into sci-fi anyway. We're already getting closer to this kind of medical science in real life, so it isn't that much of a stretch to believe that it could become routine procedure for X-COM.

I'd even go as far as saying that X-COM would market such advances, selling their advanced cybernetics and breakthroughs in cell-regeneration to the various hospitals of the world to obtain extra funding. They already do that when they sell weapons and alien corpses on the black (or grey) market, why not make some legit money through pharmaceuticals?

...Oh, God, I'm starting to make X-COM sound like the Umbrella Corporation.

.....Oh, God, the meld is just an alien form of the T-Virus that has been perfected!

.......OH GOD! The gene modified soldiers are all B.O.W.s, and the cybernetic soldiers are all Tyrants!

WHAT HAVE WE BECOME!!!!!
 
ZombieSplitter53

ZombieSplitter53

Game Master
Staff member
Taxor_the_First said:
And there's another series that is on my list of "Never played but really should at some point."
I feel so uncultured.
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If you want to know the story but you don't have time to look up old PS1 games, I'd recommend the Resident Evil novelization by S.D. Perry. They're kinda like what the Resident Evil movies would have been like if Paul W. S. Anderson cared about the story or the audience. And you get to brag to everyone you know that you're reading while learning about a videogame series at the same time.
 
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