I’m not sure what #1 actually is (aside from saying I’m doing it) if not #2 (with #3 icing).
Freak, for the moment, is at 0.
author: *** Dave H.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6103891
#1 is basically “did you get that advance? yeah? Cool.” that’s a checked box.
author: Doyce T.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6103911
Doyce T. said:
then Victory Merge to address (some of) the damage previously done (mostly the intentional stuff can be fixed
You might find it more useful to use the outcomes of that move on Alycia if you are jumping into her as a PC immediately, if that wasn’t already your plan. In that case, “gain one of Jason’s goals” or the memory-related ones might give her an initial trajectory with us.
the stuff lost randomly due to the buggy Byron-hack generally won’t have a similar match with Alycia to work from), both to Jason and Alycia.
The merge is a holistic process. It treats the brain as a total system, and will look for gaps to fill no matter the reason. That means Jason and Alycia might (at your option) end up with authentic memories from the other person that plug in emotionally/logically where those gaps were. What do I mean by that?
Say that Jason, against the odds, had a memory of going out on the lake to fish with his dad and Rusty. It was secretly a stakeout to spy on a nearby chemical plant, but Jason didn’t know that at the time. The actual part where he goes fishing and catches stuff and his dad is proud and etc. got wiped away, so there’s a gap between “drove to the lake” and “came back”. Alycia, meanwhile, remembers diving into a lake to save a drowning informant after the Ukrainians threw him over the deck of a houseboat. So Jason may end up with a synthetic memory of going out there to a rented houseboat, drowning, and having someone rescue him, and thinking Alycia was there at the time. Or, thinking he saved his dad (or Alycia) from drowning in a similar way.
Use this at your option to compare/contrast the kids’ upbringings, bring in a new plot point via inherited memory, or anything else you can think of that might be interesting. If nobody cares, assume the machine did something and that there will be stuff that these two remember which didn’t factually happen. But everyone has false memories anyway, that’s how the brain works normally, so it’s probably okay? Not remembering anything is actually less healthy.
author: Bill G.
url: Community Forums: The Zipper Merge [Prep] [Cutscene] [Background] | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
Jason isn’t thrilled with the idea of synthesized memories; while he understands enough about neurology and the like to know that’s what all memories are like, he’s sensitive enough about his head being messed with that it will rub him the wrong way. Also, he has an ironically emotional tie as a scientist to the idea that there is an objective reality and memory ought to conform to it.
But any port in a storm. This seems the best way to fix this problem. 
(Alycia would probably have a similar reaction, and it isn’t quite her life on the line. That said, she’d find a poetic rightness about fixing her father’s sins against her with the help of the son of his greatest enemy, so there’s that.)
I agree that the results need to be run (at least) on Alycia, though the prospect of something going wrong for Jason needs to be in there; maybe both of them need a roll. (Default Freak for Reformed is +1)
At the very least, Alycia will be dealing with some “soft” memory stuff that will come back to haunt her at times, even if it doesn’t have a “hard” game effect.
author: *** Dave H.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6104020
So what is the actual experience going to be like? If we’re interested, and if Dave doesn’t have something else in mind (or wants suggestions):
- This is basically a very invasive surgical procedure on the brain, mediated through the nanobots and orchestrated by Leo’s Heart Factory.
- The patient will be awake for the procedure.
- Administering dexmedetomidine or a similar sedative will happen first. If Jason has a doctor, or the Quill Foundation has a medical staff, Leo will want them on hand for this part. The sedative will have an effect on blood pressure, and other sedatives could affect respiration. I don’t think Jason is on any medication, but Alycia might be…
So imagine you’re laying on your back, laying on a cold-ass metal gurney. There’s a device on your index finger, measuring blood pressure. There’s an anesthetist standing by, carefully measuring out a dose of some drug through an IV and into your arm. The needle hurt for a moment, but they gave you a sticker, and everybody loves stickers, even if you can’t admit to it. Right now, the drug they’re feeding into you makes all the pain go away. You’re feeling happy and cooperative, dreamy but not delirious.
Summer Skye Newman is hunched over a machine. She spares you a glance, smiles, and gives you a thumbs up (for both values of “you”). There’s a monitor indicating neurotransmitter levels, and everyone else’s eyes are glued to that.
On the gurney next to yours is the person with whom you’ve shared adventures, conflict, and very mixed emotions about your respective fathers. Both of you have probably experienced blood transfusions on the field, as an emergency life-saving measure for somebody. So what is this? A memory transfusion.
As the process starts, the room, the people, the situation, changes. Nothing really is any different, except your perspective.
The brain naturally produces trace amounts of dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, “the spirit molecule”, and a component in some cultures’ shamanic tradition or religious beliefs. It’s thought to affect the process of dreaming. Recreational use of DMT can lead to feelings of love, guilt, the dissolution of the ego, hearing music, falling into a void, the experience of contact with ephemeral beings, the opening of the gates of the self, and more.
Right now, to help heal the swiss-cheese gaps in itself, your brain is producing DMT on overdrive.
Right now, you are dreaming the most fantastically vivid dream you ever had. That’s foreign memories, flooding over your mental landscape, leaving behind puddles of experience wherever it finds depressions to fill.
Right now, you are about to crash through the comfortable lies and cruel self-taunts you tell yourself every day, and get a glimpse of yourself through someone else’s eyes.
Good luck.
author: Bill G.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6134515
Hrm. If Jason was reluctant to talk with AEGIS about the plan, he’s going to be uber-reluctant to talk with anyone at the Quill Foundation, given he’s still a minor. I mean, I can’t imagine the Board, or even Barbara and Hannah, being wowed about their heir apparent having his memories mixed up with the daughter of Dr. Chin, all administered through equipment built and operated by a teen-aged Spark whose provenance is either unknown or fraught itself.
If it’s necessary, we may need to get AEGIS involved in that process, too – which Jason is not wowed about, either.
FWIW, Jason is on no regular medication; he’s disgustingly healthy (probably due to all the disease exposure he had as a kid). Alycia is similarly fully immunized and quite healthy; however, there is a particular drug cocktail she takes that she’ll be reluctant to go into unless absolutely necessary.
The above description, though, sounds amazing. I look forward to writing it up at some point …
author: *** Dave H.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6135015
*** Dave H. said:
I can’t imagine the Board, or even Barbara and Hannah, being wowed about their heir apparent having his memories mixed up with the daughter of Dr. Chin, all administered through equipment built and operated by a teen-aged Spark whose provenance is either unknown or fraught itself.
Just tell them “Leo adopted me, he’s my dad now, you’re fine when that’s how it happens” and slam the door in their faces.
author: Bill G.
url: Community Forums: The Zipper Merge [Prep] [Cutscene] [Background] | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
Realistically, this is all something you guys can just decide to do without telling anyone… once you know you don’t HAVE to borrow her from Aegis, since they want to give her to you…
author: Doyce T.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6135405
Doyce T. said:
Realistically, this is all something you guys can just decide to do without telling anyone… once you know you don’t HAVE to borrow her from Aegis, since they want to give her to you…
I think he’s referring specifically to my suggestion of having a doctor or medical personnel on hand, which the board would probably know about (or find out about sooner or later).
Unrelated to that, the last bit makes me want AEGIS to just show up with Alycia in tow, not tell us anything about “we want her on your team”, and just take Leo off to the side and have a talk that nobody else overhears. After the Dread Queen retreated, and now with this, it’d look like Leo just gets shit done and has a plan, when he himself has no goddamn idea what just happened and is getting more and more uncomfortable with this rep he suddenly has.
author: Bill G.
url: Community Forums: The Zipper Merge [Prep] [Cutscene] [Background] | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
I’d already been riffing off of Bill’s rejoinder above about a scene getting Barbara and Hannah to authorize this in secret (“Risk to my life? Jesus, Barbara, I just got back from another dimension in the middle of a war. After that – I was in a freaking war, right here in Halcyon. If I can make that decision, I can make a decision about this.”)
That said,
(1) I’m okay with dealing with this less formally. If Leo, backed up by Summer and Aria, with advance planning by Jason and Alycia, can’t administer the proper drip, I’m not sure a generic doctor couldn’t.
(2) AEGIS may have a vested interest in making this resolution for Jason – getting him to owe them (and getting Alycia in the same boat), also having knowledge about something about which the public reaction might be sketchy would give them a stick along with the carrot.
(3) Even outside of the medical process, Bill’s comments in the previous post, I’m happy to let Leo get backed into a corner about all of this (and be in a position where he might take the fall, or have some additional sense of responsibility if the rolls on this go south).
author: *** Dave H.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6136621
*** Dave H. said:
I’m happy to let Leo get backed into a corner about all of this (and be in a position where he might take the fall, or have some additional sense of responsibility if the rolls on this go south).
What a pal. 
I’m okay proceeding as described.
author: Bill G.
url: Community Forums: The Zipper Merge [Prep] [Cutscene] [Background] | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop