[Icelander]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

I believe you mean 'yourself'.

I did, but the character limit won't accept my correction if I'm adding characters, so I've re-worded slightly.

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Which seriously? First mistake I've found, so you're an amazing technical writer

I'm sure there are other mistakes. When I see some on re-reading, I try to fix them. Though I ought to be able to write without major errors by now, considering that judges aren't all that fond of typos in legal briefs.

Originally Posted by evileeyore

(and the story has remained griping too, but I reckon you've had some help there ;) ).

Really? Still?

I was pretty sure I'd ruined everything by taking pretty much every single heroic adventure trope out behind a shed and shooting it, ending the central conflict with Warden Tyrrell in a terribly anti-climatic way and then going on to execute the Big Bad before he even had time to launch into a villainous speech.

To all appearances, it's all over on Jewel Island now, bar the clean-up. Of course, the clean-up may include burying our characters in deep dungeons or shallow graves, but if so, there isn't really anything exciting we can do to prevent it. Just tell our stories to a lot of interrogators who'll arrive in hazmat suits and hope they that Onyx Rain doesn't decide that we are too dangerous and unpredictable to be any further use. And it all ended a few sessions ago, with the past three sessions having been aftermath, really.

And the way it ended was pretty anti-climatic. No dramatic confrontation with Warden Tyrrell, just short, sharp clash of several seconds. No back-and-forth, extended duel, interrupted by several long tense conversations, just a brutal curb-stomp. Not even a one-liner.

I actually considered apologising to the GM and other players for ruining a perfectly good dramatic set-up to a bitter duel between romantic rivals and deadly foes, the chivalric knight and his dark counterpart, still retaining some twisted semblance of honour.

But as we are using starkly realistic rules, for all that the characters have larger-than-life supersoldier capabilities, there just wasn't any logical way to do otherwise. As soon as Tyrrell made a tactical error caused by his fury, Taylor had to rely on speed and violence of action to take him down before he recovered. Which didn't allow any time for dialogue, sadly.

And instead of leaving Dr. Cotton alive as a recurring antagonist, protected from direct attack by his status as a vital Onyx Rain source, I went and executed him. To the shock and horror of the GM, but, as is evident in Dr. Anderson's opinion, to the pleased surprise of his player. At least I could get in a one-liner there, thanks to good ole' fire and brimstone preaching, but going into a guilty funk immediately after really undercuts the coolness of dispatching the villain.

Actually, come to think of it, I might as well have designed Chase Taylor to subvert pretty much every trope that makes action-adventure fun, light-hearted and cool. He is too horrified at his own actions when he is forced to take life to ever mow down mooks with a grin while quipping in one-liners; he's too straight-laced, Christian and wussy to ever be likely to get the girl, not to mention that 17 years later, he's still hung up on an unrequited crush; and instead of riding off into the sunset after the action stops, he fusses around doing all the boring clean-up while moping over his human imperfections.

He's like the anti-Bond.

Originally Posted by evileeyore

DUN DUN DUUUUUN!

I swear to ----ing God, Impulsive is the worst when you're trying to keep somebody safe!

Combined with an array of psychological issues that leads mental health specialists to diagnose her, variously, with Anti-Social, Borderline, Histrionic or Narcissistic Personality Disorder*, it's pretty much guaranteed to cause contant panic in anyone taking on the role of caretaker.

In GURPS terms, Cherry Bell's nastiest traits are Callous**, Sadism (Mental Only) and Selfish, but the most problematic for her keepers are probably Impulsive and Trickster. Low Self-Image is really sad, of course, but actually helpful in curtailing suicidal overconfidence in crazy schemes.

*For reasons of villainy and secrecy, we haven't gotten an diagnosis of her we trust, but a case might be made for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which in women is often misdiagnosed as Borderline Personality Disorder, combined with after-effects of the Jade Serenity chemicals.
**Hopefully, limited by now so that it doesn't apply to Chase Taylor and Dr. Michael Anderson. As Sherilyn Bell was not remotely Callous (or Sadistic or Selfish) before the Incident, we are hoping these are symptoms of drug interactions or psychological trauma, which might mean they are treatable with non-evil psychotherapy.