Boring factoids not mentioned because the story would have been twice as
long;
1) Kort and Kand
‘had a thing.’ Kort,
like Kand, is a bully, and they got along well, with Kand being the first woman he’s met as violent and
ill-tempered and contemptuous of ‘weakness’ (i.e. everyone else) as
himself. It may not have been love, yet,
but she’s the first person he hasn’t held in contempt, and he’s gonna be pissed at Sarya when he
wakes up and find out that she’s dead…
The first person who notes that this sets up sequel potential gets
kicked right in the ghoulies. There will be no sequel. I hope.
I pray.
2) Kand was not mind-controlled. She was free-range evil. As were Mano,
Kort and the Persuader. Everybody else working for Tharok was not trusted.
(Well, *nobody* was trusted, but Tharok only
had so many mind-control implants to go around, which is why Mano, Kort, the Persuader and Kand got to be evil of their own volition, and many of the
Warriors of the Sangti also had to be duped by the
Seers and other Warriors that Tharok, with the help
of Kand, did control.)
3) Tharoks ship has cloaking technology,
shunt-technology, faster-than-light interstellar capability, etc. It’s as good as a Coluan
ship (and better armed, to boot), and only Dox can
figure it out, making Venegar, ironically, the only
planet in the UP to have a Coluan-equivalent
‘diplomatic’ vessel.
4) The ‘Priests of Memory’ on Talokk are the
rare Talokkian telepaths. On most other worlds, telepaths are
indistinguishable from the common populace, but on Talokk
VIII, telepaths are born with green skin and hair, and can be identified at
birth. These babies are taken to the
mountain temples to join the priesthood.
‘Normal’ Talokkians are blue, dark purple or
glossy black in skin color. Ravin and Tasmia are from the
same continent, and share the blue coloration.
Talokkian eyes are always black, regardless of
skin tone or telepathic / normal status.
Unlike most humanoids in this sector of the galaxy, including Titanians, Braalians, Winathians, Carggites, Xanthuni, Orandans, Venegarians, etc., Talokkians do
not seem to have ‘come from Earth.’ The
evidence is unclear whether or not they evolved on Talokk
VIII.
5) Braal was settled by Earthers
from primarily European and Asian stock. Most
Braalians have dark hair, brown eyes and sallow
skin, with Asian facial features being relatively common. Rare Braalians have
blue eyes, green eyes or blonde hair. Most
Braalians have a slighter build, like Rokk, with Kort being an exception.
Due to the high iron concentration in Braalian
physiology, brown-eyed Braalians have a reddish tint to
their eyes, green-eyed Braalians appear to have
brown eyes, and the rare blue-eyed Braalians have
purple eyes. The eyes of Braalians
do not normally glow in the dark. Rokk is special, having had one of the strongest biomagnetic fields on record, before the arrival of Kort. Rokk was considered ‘special,’ but not freakishly so. In the case of Kort,
the biomagnetic field was so off-the-charts that
he was openly referred to as a mutant or a freak (particularly by those he
had beaten), and there was a question whether or not he would even be allowed
to compete!
6) Rokk does not have a ‘man-crush’ on
Garth. I deliberately avoided using
gender-specific pronouns when having Rokk recount his
past on Braal, to leave it open and allow for the
possibility, but, while Rokk has experience playing
both sides of the court, Garth is completely off his radar. As Rokk would ruefully
point out, “Jath is all the ‘man’ I’ll ever need.”
7) Garth, on the other hand, doth protest too much. Alayn’s change to Ayla didn’t just bother him because of the ‘losing a
brother’ thing, as much as the, ‘we’re identical twins, if *he’s* a she, what
does that say about me?’ thing. Winathian farmboys are often
beefy, but as Ayla became daintier, Garth spent a lot
of time working off aggression at the gym, and is beefier than many. As she became more female, Garth
overcompensated and became more male. You’ll
note that he doesn’t mention this, because he’s, what a shock, an unreliable
narrator! His mild attraction towards Rokk has no effect on his relationship with Imra, to whom he’s *far* more attracted. Imra knows and
dismisses this. She’s a telepath, if she
waited for a man who never noticed anyone else ever, she’d spend the rest of
her life waiting, alone.
8) Winath was settled by Earth-descended
humanoids from many worlds of all different ethnicities. The Ranzz family in
particular is of Scottish descent (although, like most Europeans, there’s a motley
mixture involved), and a thousand years ago, their family was known as ‘the Ryans.’ That name
has been corrupted over the centuries, obviously.
9) Colu, for centuries, consisted of the One,
the Twos and the Threes. The One was
some form of artificially intelligent life that landed (some say crashed) on
the world and sent nanomachines into the crust of the
world and transformed the vast sheets of silicon beneath the surface of Colu into one enormous super-computer! This planet-sized mechanical intelligence is
‘the One.’ Building sized
supercomputers, often shaped like vast humanoid skulls with many tentacle- like
inputs to the rest of the planet and to each other (and down into the ground),
run the sixteen individual ‘cities’ of Colu. These are the Twos. The Threes were a ‘race’ of thousands of
non-sentient processing units that were embodied in humanoid form, and
performed manual research, serving as the hands, eyes, etc. of the non-mobile
Twos and One. The One eventually
realized that Colu could not stay hidden behind
cloaking shields from the burgeoning United Planets, and crafted two new
ranks. The current Threes were
downgraded to Fives, being replaced by the current Threes (like Ambassador Orin
Fex), a caste of sentient researchers, and their
aides, the Fours (like Sharn Nux). Coluan Threes and
Fours are smarter than any other known humanoid, for certain, but much of their
computational abilities are tied up in specific matrices. Fives remain ‘smarter,’ if non-sentient,
being designed solely for computational ability. Despite this, the Coluan
Embassy ‘stacks the deck,’ using espionage and sabotage to retain their
technological edge, first by stealing any useful developments from their
‘allies,’ and, more importantly, making sure that they maintain an exclusive
control of certain technologies, such as the development of fully-sentient
artificial intelligence (which has been achieved at least a half-dozen times on
various UP worlds, only to suffer ‘accidents’), and dimensional shunt technology. The One has spent the last eighty
Earth-standard years working on ‘The Problem,’ and vast quantities of Coluan resources are spent assisting in this task. ‘The Problem’ it seeks is a means of exactly
mathematically expressing every particular of any given object or event,
coordinating it in time, space, by mass, atomic number, vector, etc. Once all sixteen variables are assigned (and
note that the One still hasn’t even found out what all sixteen of the variables
*are*), the One theorizes that it will be able to *change* any single variable,
altering the position in space, or time, or atomic composition, or mass, of any
phenomena it has so ‘measured.’ By it’s own calculations, the One is decades, perhaps even
centuries, away from solving ‘the Problem,’ and the rest of the galaxy remains
blissfully ignorant of it’s relentless progress towards mathematical
omnipotence.
10) Titan was settled by Earthers of all
creeds, castes and colorations, sharing only the psi-active
gene in common. The vast majority of
them came from Asia, Africa,
11) Related to their reliance on agriculture, and being subject to natural
forces, such as weather, Winathians tend to have
a strong respect for the natural world. In
some cases, this has reached the stage of faith, with overtones as much scientific
as religion. Ayla, in particular, had difficulties with this faith, as
‘the will of nature’ is the ‘god’ of this faith, and a person changing their
gender is considered to be subverting the ‘natural order.’ It doesn’t reach the point of crowds and pitchforks,
but neither is it a particularly fun environment for the ‘pervert.’
12) Cargg has three moons, equidistantly spaced
and sharing an identical orbital track. There
is little chance that this occurred by coincidence, but the science that could
have arranged such a phenomena is beyond even Coluan
means. More importantly, in between
the three moons, also equidistant, are a trio of spatial distortions, barely
detectable. Any matter (or even highly
energized plasma) causes these distortions to ‘flare up’ momentarily, and
hurl the intruding matter many dozens, or even *hundreds* of lightyears
distant. These triggered wormholes
always end at the same destinations, and while they are ‘open,’ matter and
energy can travel through in either direction.
(The wormholes cannot be activated from the distant locations, only
from Cargg’s orbit, putting Cargg
in an enviable position indeed!) Cargg is conveniently located (too conveniently located) in
the mid-part of the spiral arm dominated by the United Planets. One wormhole leads towards the galactic core
(coreward), and a second leads farther towards the
rim (rimward), making Cargg the perfect hub of commerce,
providing rapid transport to either end of the United Planets in an instant.
The third wormhole is surrounded by heavily-armed defensive satellites,
as the initial activation of this wormhole led to an invasion of Cargg by arachnoid aliens. Even the briefest attempts at opening it since
have led to attack on Cargg, and so it has been
abandoned. (Unknown to the Carggites, the third wormhole leads to the other spiral arm
of our galaxy, directly across the core, but the terminus point is under the
control of rapacious aliens known as the Spider Guild.) The wormholes, like the three moons of Cargg, are clearly artificial constructs, but, again, their
creators are unknown. Most Carggites living on Cargg, or throughout
the universe, are no different than ‘normal’ Earth-descended humanoids, but
a rare few have acquired the resources to purchase special flights through
the wormholes. By essentially wrecking
a space-distorting faster-than-light drive as the ship passes through the
wormhole, native Carggites are distorted in passing
through the wormhole, and for each Carggite on the
ship, two identical Carggites appear at the end-point.
A specific flight to ‘induct’ new members of the merchant elite into
the ‘duo’ caste occur every year, and of the Carggite
billions, several thousand at any time have these ‘twins,’ that can be re-absorbed
or shunted forth through act of will. Only
the cream of the elite (such as Ambassador Guamti
and his daughter) can afford a second trip, through the other wormhole (destroying
yet another expensive warp-engine), and gain the ability to triplicate. It is possible that such a flight could be arranged
through the third wormhole, but as it cannot be safely used, this has never
been tested. Multiple flights of this
sort through the same wormhole have no additive effect, and non-Carggites (even other humanoid émigrés who were born on Cargg) do not seem to benefit from this unique property.
13) Kathoon was settled by the Amazons of
Earth, 24 centuries ago. The Kathooni have no connection with the Themiscryan
Amazons of later centuries, and would find the notion of ageless women living
in a society with no males (and thus, no children), would seem pointless and
self-defeating to them. Kathoon itself is tide-locked, facing a large red sun. A sister planet called Heka,
is locked in the same orbit directly between Kathoon
and the sun, Aers’ Eye, creating a patch of perpetual
shadow, in which the Kathooni civilization is
nestled. Heka
is not tide-locked, and revolves in it’s orbit
normally. The interaction between the
two worlds magnetic fields creates powerful magnetic
storms, as well as vivid auroras, which provide the only ‘light’ that the
average Kathooni sees in her lifetime. Where the shadow of Heka
doesn’t reach, the world of Kathoon has a ring of
fire-blasted desert, burnt by the intensity of Aers’
Eye. Beyond that, the planet quickly
cools again, and another vast habitable region lies beyond the ‘burning lands,’
until now having always been out of the Kathooni
reach. Beyond that ring of fertile land,
on the perpetually dark far side, Kathoon is buried
in great sheets of ice. Within the next
century, Kathoon will blossom, as tunnels are crafted
by Braalian miners under the ‘burning lands’ to the
undeveloped fertile ring. Settlers will
move into that area, a mixture of Kathooni and
re-settled Braalians, as the two worlds enter a
marriage-of-convenience. The Kathooni Warrior and Seer caste will remain confined to the
perpetual twilight of the original lands, as sunlight severs their connection
to their powers, but the new settlers will increasingly intermarry with Braalian laborers, creating a new breed of Kathooni with limited biomagnetic
abilities. By happy chance, Braal has an excess of males in need of work consigned to a
life of ‘soccer hooliganism’ on Braal, while Kathoon has a surplus of aggressive females seeking
‘worthy’ mates.
14) Ambassador Shatra of Kathoon
will be the one to introduce the notion of a Braalian
alliance, and, after consulting with Champion Krinn,
will discard the offers from Two-Seven and Magstar,
the two leading Braalian cartels, each with a
half-dozen interplanetary contracts, to instead sign an exclusive trade-pact
with the Blacksteel Cartel, corporate ‘rulers’ of the
territory inhabited by the Krinn family. Being the first interplanetary trade-pact the
small Blacksteel Cartel has signed, Kathoon finds itself in the same enviable position that a
young first-time Blacksteel Champion once found himself,
treasured as the first, best thing to ever happen to Blacksteel,
instead of being dismissed by a much larger cartel as ‘just another
contract.’ Blacksteel
makes some mistakes, but Kathoon is also new to the
game, and they learn together, both gaining far more from the alliance than
would have happened with a larger corporation, less willing to negotiate with
such an important client.
15) Tasmia Mallor
did not get to keep Nyeun Chun Ti’s
‘Atomic Axe.’ She was just ‘holding it
for him.’ Really. In this world, she is capable of traversing a
shadow-realm between spaces, so quickly that Ravin
could summon her from Talokk VIII and she arrived
within an hour of his call. (In this
case, she required a touchstone of a rare Talokkian
mineral, larger than her body, to make the transition. She can’t normally teleport across
interstellar distances!) She can
normally shadow-step many miles without effort, and can also grab people and
pull them into her shadow-realm, where they remain frozen and insensate, trapped
between ticks of the clock and out of contact with the material dimension. While she held the Axe in shadow, the
Persuader could not summon it, and while Tharok was
in shadow, his ship could not ‘find’ him to teleport him to safety. She has a limited ‘carrying capacity’ and
chose not to test it by trying to hold both the Axe and Tharok
in shadow at the same time. Yes, she got
short shrift in the story, as did Mano and the
Persuader, but it had to end somewhere, didn’t it?
16) Jo Nah has the standard ‘Ultra Boy’ powers. I had him make extensive use of super-speed,
limited use of super-strength, occasional displays of flash vision, flight
briefly, and some invulnerability. So
long as his psi-neural control device was attached to
his nervous system, it was protected by his invulnerability. Once Imra rendered
it unconscious, it withdrew it’s tendrils from Jo’s nervous system and was
immediately cooked by the Ranzz twins lightning
barrage. Now that he’s a Champion, Ayla will likely shack up with him, ‘cause
she’s ‘that kind of girl’ and he’s ‘that kind of boy.’
17) Rokk’s third Championship match was
against Kort, and he wore body-armor to survive the
punishing serves of the ‘mutant.’ There
had been controversy and rumors leading up to the match that he had left Blacksteel Cartel, and he deliberately fueled these rumors
by removing his Blacksteel branding (a large tattoo
of a black sword and star on his chest and stomach). He showed up for the match wearing much
smaller corporate branding, stylized to be harder to recognize, and the holos had to zoom in to find out that he was still
representing Blacksteel, and that the rumors had been
a PR stunt. His ‘tactic’ was to extend
his arms, standing on center-line, and take Kort’s
attacks, causing the ball to ‘roll’ on one arm, across his chest, and back up
the other arm right back at Kort, attempting to
redirect as much of it’s force as possible (and getting a lovely stripe of
bruises all along his arms and chest), rather than make a futile attempt to stop
the overwhelmingly powerful shots.
Rokk’s second Championship
match was against Leeta Etsven,
a slender and vivacious Braalian also representing a
smaller Cartel (quite rare, as, before Rokk, nine out
of the ten previous Champions had either been from Two-Seven or Magstar, the dominant cartels on Braal)
named Pure Energy. She was famous for
being able to put a ‘spin’ on the ball, so that it would swerve unpredictably
as it reached her opponent. In the first
serve of the match, Rokk was distracted by his lack
of costume (his corporate handlers picked out a thong as his entire ‘costume’)
and her serve ‘jinked’ directly into his temple. He woke up surrounded by his people, and a
medical team, already a point down, and had to argue to continue the match, as
his trainers were arguing to postpone the match. He staggered back out onto the court, nursing
a concussion and seeing double, and he doesn’t remember a sprocking
thing about the match. Watching it later
on holo, he played the game of his life, moving with
seemingly impossible fluidity (and yet amazingly not losing his
‘costume’). The next thing he remembers
is the crowd cheering and people pushing him onto the stage and placing the
cobalt trophy ball into his hands. He
raised it over his head, the crowd went wild and he toppled unconscious into
the crowd. He woke up in the med-center
eight hours later, with Leeta standing over his bed
holding his trophy. For a moment he
thought it had been taken from him, but she grinned ruefully and told him that
she was hoping that he wouldn’t wake up, so she could keep it. She left the planet the next day, abandoning magno-ball and working on Venus creating magnetic bottles
for exotic gas enrichment.
Rokks first Championship match? I have no clue. He won, obviously.
18) The Blacksteel Cartel did not ‘abandon’ Rokk when he fell ill, but he was required to leave the
sport and certainly was no longer their ‘golden-boy.’ They forked out a lot of money on his
rehabilitation (you’re born in a company-town, and you’re covered for life,
that’s the company way), the largest chunk of it spent on the Coluan technology that keeps his heart, lungs, etc. in
working order. In light of recent
discoveries, it’s possible that he doesn’t actually need this tech… The Blacksteel
corporate brand resembles Dawnstars eight pointed
star symbol, with the lowest ‘point’ of the star being an extended downward
pointing sword blade twice the length of the rest of the ‘star,’ all in black,
but with the edges of the ‘blade’ lined in silver.
19) Braalian ‘mag-steel’
is an alloy of cobalt that is capable of holding a tremendous magnetic
charge. It’s also kinda
pricey, since it’s an ‘exotic’ metal (meaning a ‘semi-stable’ isotope that has
been ‘boosted’ well beyond naturally occurring ranges).
20) Titanian psi-metal
is a classified secret of the Titanian
government. Where it comes from is
unknown, but the alloy includes gold and copper in its composition, with trace
amounts of iron. Attempts at
synthesizing it off-Titan have failed, and it is presumed that telepaths are
required as part of the process to somehow ‘attune’ the metal to psionic energies. It
is worn draped around a telepaths body and functions as an extension of her
nervous system, like a ‘telepathic antenna’ serving to enhance sensitivity, and
yet also serving to blunt incoming excess signal. It therefore, paradoxically, both increases
sensitivity, and yet shields from ‘loud’ or excessive telepathic ‘noise.’ The alloy is soft and flexible, almost as
much as pure gold.
21) Telepathy can be blocked by a combination of platinum-group metals
(palladium, iridium and rhodium, specifically), worn over the head. Despite the name, platinum is not actually
one of the metals involved. It is more
effective if such a device is being worn by the telepath, to block her
abilities. It is still effective, but
less so, when worn by another as a defense against telepathic intrusion.
22) Kathoon is ruled by six Clans, each
associated with a specific metal. The
Clan with the most Seers is generally assumed to be the dominant Clan (and in
case of a tie, their vote counts as two), and the oldest Seer of that Clan is
called the ‘High Seer’ and functions as more of a moderator of group discussion
than as an actual ‘leader.’ The ruling
Clans are Cupri (copper), Genti
(silver), Auri (gold), Lateen (platinum), Antalus (tantalum) and, until recently, Sangti
(iron). Lesser Clans include Ungstae (tungsten), Balti
(cobalt), Luminn (aluminum), Itani
(titanium) and Ombal (lead). The Sangti will not
recover their seat among the ruling Clans, being the Clan that most embraces
the Braalian alliance and re-settling to the newly
developed territories. In a few
centuries, biomagnetically empowered Braal-blooded Sangti will again
be a major power on Kathoon.
23) Venegar also has six ruling Clans, in this
case, defined by the territories they control, and symbolized by a ‘sacred
object’ associated with their leaders. Sarya ruled the woodland realms of Vaul
for many decades before claiming the world-throne, dominating markets of
woodcraft and housing, as well as other products of the forest and
orchards. The symbol of Vaul is a jewel-encrusted woodsman’s axe of gleaming gold. Barak, the current
regent, is from the desert-dwelling tribes of Mair,
controlling both trade-routes through the central deserts, and also providing
rare spices. The symbol of Mair is a gourd made of solid gold, filled with water. Sarya’s friend Landa rules the island-nations of Lapal,
primarily concerned with shipping and intercontinental trade, as well as
fishing and other sea-goods (pearls, ivory, seaweed). The symbolic item of Lapal
is a bejeweled spyglass of precious metals (like most of these symbolic items,
the spyglass isn’t actually usable as such, being capped with precious stones). Kator, who’s charge Kanli perished in a
duel with Sarya, is the aging ruler of the proud
plains-folk of Sirresh, whose vast herds provide
meat, milk, wool and leather for much of the continent. Their symbol is a signal horn of ivory,
decorated with uncut river-worn precious stones and brilliant feathers. Metra leads the
mountain folk of Gardan, while raising her heir
San. Gardan
produces minerals and forgecraft, both metal goods
and jewels, and their symbol is both a mining pick at one side and a smithy’s
hammer at the other, and unlike most of the rest, is functional as both,
despite it’s fine steel construction and inset
gems. The last Clan is Fenya, currently under the stewardship of Kellen, a marshy land of endless rice paddies, producing
vast quantities of not only rice, but also other crops that have been adopted
to that environment, including hydrophilic variations on other gains, and even
cotton, making Fenya a source for grains, clothing,
and, most popularly, beer. Their object
of rulership is an unadorned wooden staff, taller
than a man and recognizable as a barge-pole.
24) The Ranzz siblings’ lightning powers come
from a unique (well, there are three of them, so not actually *unique*) ability
to reach ‘somewhere else’ and pull lightning from that place. Electrodes strapped to Ayla’s
hand while she’s sitting back reading a book and unleashing a seemingly endless
torrent of lightning will read no change in her hand’s bioelectric field and no
elevation in her heart-rate, indeed, no sign at all that she is producing tens
of thousands of volts of electricity.
For the week that Garth had a bionic replacement limb, he could extend
that metallic arm and throw lightning as if it were his normal arm. Dox took one look
at it and muttered, ‘microscale extradimensional
shunt, further study is pointless,’ and left the room.
25) Ayla’s friendship with Dox
is strictly platonic (and will remain so, so long as he remains uninterested in
such things, and in the unaging
body of a ten year old child). Garth is
a gifted pilot. Ayla
is equally gifted with computers and communications systems in particular. Had Dox not arrived
when he did, she might have gotten to show off her hacking skills… Mekt’s only ‘gift’
appears to be insanity.
26) Rokk’s brother Pol
does not have unusual biomagnetic potential, and has
the reddish eyes more common to Braalians. He’s never going to be a Champion. Loser. Maybe he’ll go nuts, outfit himself with
dangerous bionics to give himself ‘super-powers’ and become a mad threat? Probably not, Mekt’s
got enough of the ‘crazy brother’ vibe for any group. Pol goes on to live
a boring normal life. Then he slips on a
banyo peel. In the shower. How it
got there is anybody’s guess. He was 112
and senile at time, it’s entirely possible he was
eating breakfast in the shower again…
27) Teh sex.
Imra is, by Titanian
standards, a ‘space hussy,’ having left her disciplined and restrained world
behind for a life of wanton sensualistic hedonism among aliens. She’s not regretting that choice in the slightest.
Most Titanians, due to their cramped living
conditions and telepathically open society, only have sex once a year, on
their anniversary, so as not to ‘disturb the peace’ with excessive and distracting
telepathic ‘noise’ from the inevitable pleasure-looping telepathic feedback
that results. That was one of many Titanian
customs to which Imra has thought, ‘Sprock that!’ Despite
having not experienced physical intimacy before leaving Titan (as unmarried
Titanians just ‘don’t do that sort of thing’), Imra
had grown up
28) Aphrodisia, the ‘Great Spirit’ of Kathooni faith, empowers no champions. Chosen of Atheen
become Seers, Chosen of Temeese become Warriors. One heretical group thought that Aphrodisia, as goddess of love, might accept only *males*
as her chosen, and there was a brief war over this notion. The males who have snuck into the temple and
attempted to take up her challenge have met with no success. It is possible, but untested, that Aphrodisia will only grant her favor to a *couple* that
stands before her and faces many challenges of their love for one another. The author hasn’t decided yet. He certainly hasn’t decided if Jath and her outworlder mate will
be that couple… Oh look, another
possible seed for future stories.
Stories that will not be written!
Die, plot bunny, die!
29) Validus, and the other Validi
being grown in clone-vats, was created from Tharok’s
own DNA, mutated to monstrous size, and implanted with the cloned neural psi-active tissue he’d stolen from dozens of telepaths of
different races. Each ‘Validus’ was a one-‘man’ gestalt, with the power of many telepaths,
but lacking the intellect necessary to effectively use that power as anything
other than devastating psychic assaults (it was supposed to be smart enough
to follow Tharok’s verbal directives, but a combination
of untrained telepathic hyper-sensitivity and fragmented and contradictory
impulses from it’s many ‘brain-donors’ drove it insane, forcing Tharok to implant it with a psi-neural
control implant, also created from harvested telepathic neural tissue, which
he then proceeded to refine and use on many other people…). A close examination of Tharok
would note that he also had three fingers, and sharp teeth, like his ‘son.’
Whether or not he had three toes is unclear, since he’s got mechanical
feet now.
30) Mano survived being knocked into next week
by Jo Nah. He lost consciousness from
a combination of acceleration trauma and the building-collapsing impact across
town that was the end of his unscheduled ‘flight.’ His containment suit survived the impact as
well, evident from the lack of ginormous anti-matter
explosion that would have resulted if he’d breached. He’s back in Takron-Galtos,
in a force-shielded cell, unable to touch anything. He’s pretty grumpy about it, too. It’s a good thing the structural reinforcement
fields of his containment suit are powered by his own
anti-matter reactions, eh? (My Mano
is thus a combination of Mano, Wildfire, the Human Bomb and Anti-Matterman. He’s also freakishly ugly, a mass of burn tissue
and scars, since every time his skin contacts air, the other layers *explode.*
The reactions that empower him also keep him alive, sustaining him
without air, food or drink, which he sometimes regrets, given that his life
sucks.)