Steve and S.C.A.M.P. arc

[Rukellian]

Zhym and PyroArrow, go ahead and continue your characters' arc here. You both will now be officially teaming up for the mission ahead and will need to work together on this, good luck!

I will get back to providing updates for this arc tomorrow evening, after work. In the mean time, if both of you are on at the same time, feel free to peform interactions between your characters.

[Rukellian]

The two supers meet for the first time in person as they stop in front of the abandoned chemical factory. Though they may have seen each other through live video feeds, heard each other, the realization of who Scamp was finally hit Steve. He is working with a dog... Scamp on the other hand is very excited to see Steve in person, already quite familiar with working with humans on missions.

After the initial dialoge exchange is over, if there is any, I will prepare a quick map for guys of the abandoned factory. You will have to find the entrance of the warehouse yourself for it is deliberately hidden.

[Zhym]

S.C.A.M.P., recognizing Steve Sanderson, bounds across the street (after looking both ways. Safety first, kids!). He runs up to Steve, tail wagging and tongue hanging out. Hi! I'm S.C.A.M.P! he sends telepathically. Let's catch some bad guys!

[PyroArrow]

Steve Sanderson:

Steve kneels down to greet & pet Scamp.

Hi, & i'm Steve.
"Yea, sounds like a plan!"
"Now, let's see how to get into this warehouse!"


We know we are at the front of the chemical factory warehouse but can not see an entrance?
Or is it that we are in front of the Factory (Manufacturing) building & need to locate the storage warehouse building & entrance?!

[Rukellian]

You are in front of the factory and need to find the entrance to the warehouse inside, I will provide a rough map shortly as well as some visuals. Visuals first.

outside of abandoned factory.jpg (121.57 KiB) Viewed 1858 times

abandoned factory 1.jpg (36.86 KiB) Viewed 1858 times

abandone factory 2.jpg (151.59 KiB) Viewed 1858 times

The atmosphere is dark and murky as the entire place is rundown and shows years of disuse. No one would even think to look here for a black market warehouse; it's a good thing you had Professor Sheldon point out its general vicinity, otherwise you could have been searching for days! The sounds of dripping can be heard in the background as you walk into the abandoned complex, leaking pipes no less. You do not know if there are any chemicals still in the factory, but you do know that the air smells funny, Scamp especially being sensitive to the scents around him can confirm this.

You know, I was thinking, perhaps I could just describe the area to you instead of mapping it out, would you guys mind? Or will some of you need a visualization?

[Zhym]

S.C.A.M.P. sniffs around for any smells that seem out of place among the others. Does he sense any people, either by smell or by thought, other than Steve?

I can probably manage without a map for now.

[Rukellian]

Out of all of the recorded scent signatures listed in your core memory database, no signs of Ichnorite, known man-made drugs, or people come up, save Steve. The chemical-based smells are heavy in the air and gives Scamp a hard time in filtering through everything.

[Zhym]

What's the general layout of the place? Are there exterior doors we'd need to get past, or an interior structure (say, management offices)?

Somehow, I expected the warehouse to look more like this:

cohwarehouse.jpg (82.48 KiB) Viewed 1856 times

[PyroArrow]

Rukellian you can just describe it to us. That is what i did for my game with the Keep initially then after looking at various maps, i just decided to draw it out & update/modify it accordingly.

Zhym, well yea the warehouse would look like that, we are still in the factory part looking for that area.

[Rukellian]

What's the general layout of the place? Are there exterior doors we'd need to get past, or an interior structure (say, management offices)?

Somehow, I expected the warehouse to look more like this:

cohwarehouse.jpg

[Rukellian]

The structure of the chemical plant would look something like this from a skyview:

factory layout.jpg (67.85 KiB) Viewed 1854 times

There would be chemical storage tanks, distilling machines, catwalks, cargo and storage bays for equipment and raw materials, an office area and a breakroom, just to name a few things to be expected in such a place.

[Zhym]

Go walkies?! S.C.A.M.P. thinks to Steve. I mean, let's walk though the place. I'll keep smelling and mind-listening for anyone who might be here. If this stuff we're tracking is as dangerous and powerful as Maurice said, you can bet your last chew toy it'll be guarded.

[PyroArrow]

Steve Sanderson:

Steve actually ponders for a moment trying to gather a memory of the last time he had a chew toy when teething....

[Rukellian]

Weaving your way through piles of debris and jumping over broken catwalks, you start to explore the area (lower left corner of the provided factory blueprint. It doesn't take long for you two to hear the familiar sound of boots walking against metal grates, close by too. "Huh, thought I heard something over there. Hope it isn't one of those damn customers again...."

[Rukellian]

Your sense of smell is temporarily thrown out of whack right now due to the heavy chemical aroma in the air. This will likely remain the case until you enter a new area other than the plant.

[Rukellian]

We don't need to teleport the whole thing. Just enough of it so it doesn't work anymore. Won't the teleporter zap part of the camera away?

What are the exact features of that "target disk gun?" And I see that Steve has the Teleportation power—shouldn't he be able to teleport into the office without using the gun? Looking at the power description, the worst that could happen is that Steve would be dazed, not killed:

Teleportation
The character may teleport a number of sectors equal to the Rank Value of this power in a single turn. Teleporting requires the player to roll d% on the Master Table using the Rank Value of this power. A result of black means the character arrives dazed at the destination sector and must spend the next turn recovering (the character may take no actions that turn).
If the character is unfamiliar with – or cannot see – the destination sector and teleports into a solid object – which can include the ground – the player must roll d% on the Master Table using the Rank Value of the character’s Fortitude. A result of black immediately bounces the character back to the starting sector where the character is dazed and must spend 1-10 turns recovering (taking no actions during that time). Any other result immediately bounces the character back to the starting sector where the character is dazed for one turn.

When Kipling originally made this character, Steve Sanderson did not have the ability to teleport on his own, he relied on technology. For his character design, he chose to use a disc gun as his main way of teleportation. From there, I sort of ran with it, applying real life logic to make it seem as realistic as possible, all the benefits and possible dangers of such a device, method of travel. This naturally lead to quantum mechanics and the transferrences of data as explained in the simplified version of the method.

From a RPG point of view, you can use your teleport power freely without having to worry about how it works too much. However, if you are one to play realistically, dealing with the hand you were dealt as best as you can, then here is how the process of Quantum teleportation will work:

Quantum teleportation is a process by which quantum information (e.g. the exact state of an atom or photon) can be transmitted (exactly, in principle) from one location to another, with the help of classical communication and previously shared quantum entanglement between the sending and receiving location. Because it depends on classical communication, which can proceed no faster than the speed of light, it cannot be used for superluminal transport or communication of classical bits. It also cannot be used to make copies of a system, as this violates the no-cloning theorem. Although the name is inspired by the teleportation commonly used in fiction, fiction far outpaces current technology. There is no possible, so far, teleportation as in fiction: although it is possible to teleport one or more Qubit of information between two (entangled) atoms. This has not yet been achieved between molecules or anything larger. One may think of teleportation as either a kind of transportation, or as a kind of communication; it provides a way of transporting a qubit from one location to another, without having to actually move a physical particle along with it.

The seminal paper first expounding the idea was published by C. H. Bennett, G. Brassard, C. Crépeau, R. Jozsa, A. Peres and W. K. Wootters in 1993. Since then, quantum teleportation has been realized in various physical systems. Presently, the record distance for quantum teleportation is 143 km (89 mi) with photons, and 21m with material systems. On September 11, 2013, the "Furusawa group at the University of Tokyo has succeeded in demonstrating complete quantum teleportation of photonic quantum bits by a hybrid technique for the first time worldwide."


Non-technical summary

It is known, from axiomatizations of quantum mechanics (such as categorical quantum mechanics), that the universe is fundamentally composed of two things: bits and qubits. Bits are units of information, and are commonly represented using zero or one, true or false. These bits are sometimes called "classical" bits, to distinguish them from quantum bits, or qubits. Qubits also encode a type of information, called quantum information, which differs sharply from "classical" information. For example, a qubit cannot be used to encode a classical bit (this is the content of the no-communication theorem). Conversely, classical bits cannot be used to encode qubits: the two are quite distinct, and not inter-convertible. Qubits differ from classical bits in dramatic ways: they cannot be copied (the no-cloning theorem) and they cannot be destroyed (the no-deleting theorem).

Quantum teleportation provides a mechanism of moving a qubit from one location to another, without having to physically transport the underlying particle that a qubit is normally attached to. This is important, as heretofore, the only way of moving qubits was to move the actual physical particles that qubits are attached to (e.g. by foot, car or airplane). Much like the invention of the telegraph allowed classical bits to be transported at high speed across continents, so also quantum teleportation holds the promise that one day, qubits could be moved likewise. However, as of 2013, only photons and single atoms have been teleported; molecules have not, nor does this even seem likely in the upcoming years, as the technology remains daunting. Specific distance and quantity records are stated below.

The movement of qubits does require the movement of "things"; in particular, the actual teleportation protocol requires that an entangled quantum state or Bell state be created, and its two parts shared between two locations (the source and destination, or Alice and Bob). In essence, a certain kind of "quantum channel" between two sites must be established first, before a qubit can be moved. Teleportation also requires a classical information link to be established, as two classical bits must be transmitted to accompany each qubit. The need for such links may, at first, seem disappointing; however, this is not unlike ordinary communications, which requires wires, radios or lasers. What's more, Bell states are most easily shared using photons from lasers, and so teleportation could be done, in principle, through open space.

Single atoms have been teleported, although not in the science-fiction sense. An atom consists of several parts: the qubits in the electronic state or electron shells surrounding the atomic nucleus, the qubits in the nucleus itself, and, finally, the electrons, protons and neutrons making up the atom. Physicists have teleported the qubits encoded in the electronic state of atoms; they have not teleported the nuclear state, nor the nucleus itself. Thus, performing this kind of teleportation requires a feedstock of atoms at the receiving site, that are readily available for having qubits imprinted on them. In an abstract sense, the feedstock is not strictly necessary: the atoms and their nuclei could be created, for example, with atom-smashers or via nuclear fusion; this, however, would be economically absurd, and so a feedstock is used instead. The importance of teleporting nuclear state is unclear: nuclear state does affect the atom, e.g. in hyperfine splitting, but whether such state would need to be teleported in some futuristic "practical" application is debatable.

The quantum world is strange and unusual; so, aside from no-cloning and no-deleting, there are other oddities. For example, quantum correlations arising from Bell states seem to be instantaneous (the Alain Aspect experiments), whereas classical bits can only be transmitted slower than the speed of light (quantum correlations cannot be used to transmit classical bits; again, this is the no-communication theorem). Thus, teleportation, as a whole, can never be superluminal, as a qubit cannot be reconstructed until the accompanying classical bits arrive.

The proper description of quantum teleportation requires a basic mathematical toolset, which, although complex, is not out of reach of advanced high-school students, and indeed becomes accessible to college students with a good grounding in finite-dimensional linear algebra. In particular, the theory of Hilbert spaces and projection matrixes is heavily used. A qubit is described using a two-dimensional complex number-valued vector space (a Hilbert space); the formal manipulations given below do not make use of anything much more than that. Strictly speaking, a working knowledge of quantum mechanics is not required to understand the mathematics of quantum teleportation, although without such acquaintance, the deeper meaning of the equations may remain quite mysterious.

The features of the target disc gun rely on a series of beacon discs and the main control pad built into Steve's suit. There are two primary forms of teleportation available to him. The first is the traditional one that the power explanation goes over. Instead of visualizing where he is teleporting to, he just has to lock on to the beacon using a homing device in his suit, and then pull the trigger on the disc gun. While holding the gun, it will transport him to the designated beacon, assuming there is enough room. The secondary feature was briefly explained early on but not in great detail. Beacon discs can be placed on objects or, theoretically, humans. Using those placed beacons, Steven would adjust the settings on his gun to external transport, allowing him to teleport an object or creature from one point to another using the placed beacon system, all with the pull of a trigger. The gun itself, has a disc launching system that allows him to fire the beacons across long distances. Each of the becaons have a range to them. If you are outside of its range, you cannot teleport there, or teleport an object to there.

The science and technology behind this system is assumed to have progressed to a level that will allow such a gun to be created in the first place, taking into consideration the advanced principles and laws of quantum teleportation. As a player, Kipling never really got to use it the way he intended, so I had to guess for him and make some calls on how it is used. Of course, now that Pyro is in control of the character, he can pretty much rewrite anything about it that he doesn't like, making the process easier to understand. Perhaps he just wants to ditch the whole gun thing and have a built in teleporter in his suit. If it means being able to move the story forward, I would be more than willing to work with you guys on this, simplifying or clarifying the system in place for his teleportation power.

[Rukellian]

updated factory map.jpg (193 KiB) Viewed 1721 times

Here is the new map, hopefully less confusing then the first two.
We will retrace our activity and go back to where you guys first entered the place. I will delete everything up to the point where you guys encounter your first guard.

[PyroArrow]

I looks like i can try to use the gun as it was written in the passage your posted above.

It is curious though as to how fast these teleportation disc markers will fire from the gun, because if it embeds into something Steve will get bounced back or if it lands on it's side, Steve will get teleported landing sideways himself.

[Zhym]

Nice map!

Are the guards constantly turning, mostly facing in any given direction, moving, etc.? Assuming they're moving, is it in any pattern, or basically random?

How tall are the catwalks? Are they all the same height?

[Rukellian]

I looks like i can try to use the gun as it was written in the passage your posted above.

It is curious though as to how fast these teleportation disc markers will fire from the gun, because if it embeds into something Steve will get bounced back or if it lands on it's side, Steve will get teleported landing sideways himself.

You bring up some good points. The disc firing rate will be the equivalent of a professional base ball player pitching a baseball, and if the disc does not land or stick to solid surface, there is a chance that the teleportation will not work and you will have to retrieve the disc before starting over again. Depending on the situation, that may not always be a viable option. If the disc lands in such a way that it isn't stationary or on solid ground, any attempted teleports will indeed bounce the person back, leaving him or her in a dazed state for the number of turns explained in the power description. If the disc were to land on a wall and you teleport to it, you will appear sideways, and risk the chance of falling if there is nothing to catch you.

The guards will be following some set patrol paths, sticking to the catwalks (which are all 10 ft. off the ground). Occassionally they will move around in their positions, turning their back at times and leaning on rails, stuff like that. Each guard has a pattern that can be learned through careful observation, but it will require a successful knowledge check in order to correctly identify such.