[Bygone] The Vitachorigisy Engine

[amechra]

Actually, here you go: the simplified version of the whole process above:

Effects: Once a character is strapped in, they are stripped of their basic life experiences. Set aside any traits that the character may have purchased since character creation, as well as any Supernatural template they may have. Then, modify the character as follows:

• Reduce all of their Attributes and their Integrity to 1.
• Remove their Virtue, Vice, and any Specialties they might have.
• Reduce all of their Skills to 0.
• Remove any Merits they have; these removed Merits are not subject to the Sanctity of Merits.
• They lose the ability to speak their native language.
• They gain the Soulless and Enervated conditions, if they did not already have them.

Reapply any traits and/or template you set aside earlier. This process takes roughly 20 minutes, produces 1/8 litre of activated Extract, and leaves the victim with every Health level but the last filled with Aggravated damage; their last Health level is filled with Bashing damage.

---

Building the new character is still subject to the same rules as above.

You know what? Example time!

Say hello to Vicky McVictimson, everybody!

Vicky McVictimson

Virtue: Ambitious
Vice: Lazy
Aspirations:
- Get laid tonight.
- Pass the GSATs tomorrow
- Finish grading those papers

Attributes:
Strength ••
Stamina •••
Dexterity ••

Intelligence •••
Wits ••
Resolve •••

Charisma ••••
Manipulation ••
Composure •••

Skills
(Mental; -3 unskilled)
Academics ••• (Biological Chemistry)*
Computers •
Crafts •
Medicine ••
Politics •• (Liberal Politics)
Science •••*

(Physical; -1 unskilled)
Athletics •• (Track and Field)
Drive •
Survival •

(Social; -1 unskilled)
Animal Ken •
Empathy •
Expression •
Persuasion •
Socialize ••
Streetwise •

Merits

Mental
Area of Expertise • (Biological Chemistry)
Good Time Management •
Interdisciplinary Speciality • (Biological Chemistry)
Multilingual (Greek, Latin) •
Professional Training • (Academic)

Social
Contacts (University of London Biology Department) ••
Resources •••

Physical
Fleet of Foot ••

Advantages
Size: 5
Speed: 11
Defense: 4
Willpower: 6
Initiative: 5
Health: 7
Integrity: 7

Vicky here has progressed a bit after character creation; she picked up a dot of Medicine, as well as a dot in the Fleet of Foot, Multilingual, and Resources Merits. Of course, given Ms. Vicky's propensity for being used for examples, she gets strapped to the Vitachorigisy Engine.

20 minutes later, her sheet looks more like this:

Vicky McVictimson

Virtue: None
Vice: None
Aspirations:
- Get laid tonight.
- Pass the GSATs tomorrow
- Finish grading those papers

Attributes:
Strength •
Stamina •
Dexterity •

Intelligence •
Wits •
Resolve •

Charisma •
Manipulation •
Composure •

Skills
(Mental; -3 unskilled)
Medicine •

(Physical; -1 unskilled)

(Social; -1 unskilled)

Merits

Mental
Multilingual (Greek, Latin) •

Social
Resources •

Physical
Fleet of Foot •

Advantages
Size: 5
Speed: 8
Defense: 2
Willpower: 2
Initiative: 2
Health: 6
Integrity: 1

Note that the only languages she now speaks are a smattering of Greek and Latin; her English has gone bye-bye.

If she had been Embraced by a vampire, she'd keep the 3 extra Merit dots and the other benefits of the Vampire template.

[amechra]

123 XP is the precise cost of the default Mortal template, including Virtue, Vice, and your default language of whatever.

I tossed an extra 2 XP on your default language to get it to a neat, even number. 125 mL is precisely 1/8th of a litre, and I like that.

In most cases, you aren't going to have a PC in the machine; if you have an NPC in there, they just get drained dry and left near death over 2 minutes. If you have a PC, I think you'll want to milk it as much as possible.

Of course, you could technically use this for a full heal that removes whatever nasty conditions you've picked up, but it would drop you back to a starting character. And it would hurt a lot.

[Leetsepeak]

Patience is a virtue. I don't have anything more substantial to say than I like it at the moment.

Okay, though about it a second longer: I imagine STs would feel free to abstract the process, but I don't imagine they'd want to go through the piece by piece removal of stats.

Also, is 125 Experiences a deliberately chosen number? Why'd you pick that?

[amechra]

No love for a machine that renders you down into easily portable liquid form, and then makes a new person from you?

Not horror enough?

[amechra]

Reserved for rumours and a fact.

Fact

Every second of the extraction process is, subjectively, a full lifetime for the poor schmuck strapped down. They get to watch their whole life get stripped down for parts, remembering nothing about what was lost except for the fact it was there. Over, and over, and over...

Oh, and a critique would be lovely.

[amechra]

The Vitachorigisy Engine
Durability 5, Size 9, Structure 20

Description: If you check the back of the Warborough Public Library, you will find this strange contraption nestled behind old cabinets and mouldering books. It looks like a pair of gurneys made from verdigris'd brass, each embedded into a corroded filing cabinet; only one of the drawers opens, displaying a set of folders filled with paper. The folder closest to the front of the drawer is always empty when the drawer slides open.

One of the gurneys is furnished with a set of leather straps, and the other is furnished with a funnel. A small glass bottle balances on top of the filing cabinet. The filing cabinet itself is covered with fine etchings, left illegible by the heavy corrosion; the only markings that can be read is the word "Vitachorigisy".

Effect: The Engine makes life; more accurately, it renders a person down to the essence of life, and then uses it to build something from scratch. This takes a few steps.

First, a living mortal human must be strapped into the gurney with leather straps; once they are entirely strapped in, the extraction begins. Treat this like a Grapple, except the gurney always gets an Exceptional success; it always "chooses" the Hold and Damage moves the first turn, and the Restrain and Damage moves in each subsequent turn. Unlike a normal Grapple, each Damage move deals 1 Level of Aggravated damage, manifesting as the character being subjected to a thousand thousand excruciating scalpel cuts.

Once the gurney has filled the character's last Health Level with Aggravated damage, it prevents them from dying, and proceeds to convert their entire history and self into clear Extract; the Extract pools at the bottom of the glass bottle.

At this point, the Damage move drains 1 dot of XP from the character instead of dealing damage, producing a single millilitre of Extract per XP. If the character does not have any banked XP, they must convert traits on their character sheet directly into XP; the trait becomes an amount of banked XP equal to the cost of buying that trait in the first place. A character's Vice and Virtue can each be converted into 2 XP, their ability to speak their mother tongue is worth 3 XP, and each dot of Integrity (or equivalent) can be converted into 3 XP. This process cannot reduce the character's Attributes or Integrity below 1.

Each trait so converted is simply... excised from both reality and the character's memory; the science they learned in 6th grade, their first words, their weakness for a pretty face... everything is stripped and liquified. If the trait was something external, such as Allies or Resources, the actions that led to acquiring those traits simply never happened; anyone else who benefited from that action still reaps those benefits - they are simply effects without a cause.

Once the gurney has extracted 125 XP worth of Extract, the next Damage move simply extracts the character's soul, causing the Extract to "activate"; activated Extract's coloration changes to a vivid jewel tone appropriate to the character that was rendered down. If the character in question was soulless, another soul must be supplied to activate the Extract. In either case, the last Health Level filled with Aggravated damage is downgraded to Bashing, and the character in question is released.

---

If the Engine is left alone for a half-hour at this point, the bottle of Extract falls over, splashing every drop of Extract into the funnel on the other gurney. Over the next 10 minutes, an entirely new person is built on that gurney, fleshing out their bodies and their life histories. The ST builds a new default mortal character as per the character creation rules, who is a perfectly mundane example of the human race. The ST should assign their "parents" with little or no regard for whether the parents have ever slept with one another or even met.

---

If another character were to open the drawer within this 30 minute window, they could pull out a short, one-page form. The form holds areas for recording a name, species, parents, important relationships, relation to the "source", age, and sex; the "species" area is, in most cases, prefilled with "Homo Sapiens Sapiens", though there are rumors that the forms nearer to the back hold other, stranger "species". In any case, if the form is completed within the 30 minutes and placed in the folder closest to the front, the character built on the other gurney meets those specifications exactly. As a special note, if the 'relation to the "source"' area is filled out with "same person", the "new" character shares their memories and experiences, as well as their Aspirations; apparently, the "source" is conscious for the whole process, which takes a little over 20 minutes on the outside.

Needless to say, strapping another character into the gurney with full knowledge of its functions is an automatic Integrity loss, and leaving them strapped down once it has begun the extraction process is a Breaking Point at -5. Otherwise, the only drawback for the "user" is having to endure the victim's constant agonized screaming.

Other uses of Extract:

Drinking It:
Activated Extract tastes deliciously fruity; anyone who drinks it removes any Fatigue penalties and treats drinking the Extract as if it fulfilled their Vice (regardless of whether or not they have a Vice).

There are 3 special cases for drinking activated Extract. Firstly, a soulless creature that drinks a full 125 mL of Extract gets a brand-new soul. Secondly, any Vampire that drinks the full 125 mL is considered to have successfully committed Diablerie on another Kindred with Blood Potency 5 and 5 dots in all Disciplines; they also gain 2 Vitae each time they wake up for the next 3 nights.

Lastly, if the original source drinks all of the Extract drawn from them, they regain all of the XP drained from them, and may immediately spend it to buy back the traits they lost.

Medicine:
Activated Extract is, quite literally, the stuff of life; a single mL dripped on a wound causes it to heal as if it were one step less severe. 25 mL applied to the proper parts of the body can cure practically any mundane disease, from a cold to AIDs.

Fixing Your Life:
There's a simple ritual that can hardly do you wrong; write some part of your life on a strip of paper. Anoint the strip with 25 mL of activated Extract, then burn it while it's still wet. The fire will burn the color of the Extract, and whatever you wrote on the paper will be gone as well. Essentially, any part of your life you could give up as part of a Pact is fair game, from a marriage to your heroin addiction.