("Bonsai Kittens"*)
Corporeal Forces: 1 Strength:
1 Agility: 3
Celestial Forces: 1 Will:
1 Perception: 3
Toughness +2, Charisma -2
Body Hits: 3.
Note that the life support system gives an additional Protection of 4,
to the Bonsai Kitten only.
Skills: Acrobatics/3, Climbing/4, Dodge/6, Move
Silently/3
Songs: Numinous Corpus/6 (Claws)
Discord: Angry/3, Paranoia/3. Note that these Discords are not normally
obvious (see below).
Well, it seemed a good idea at the time.
When the War is all over, one way or the other, the
victorious side is naturally going to want to sit down and reminisce about the
Old Days. When that happens, it's
certain that at least one favorite game is going to be Top 10 Statements That
Were Always Guaranteed To Turn Your Bowels To Water. It's also certain that these hypothetical players - whether angel
or demon - would be in universal agreement that you never, ever wanted
to hear a Technologist say, 'Well, it seemed a good idea at the time'. Anything that even they thought was
an official Bad Idea, all things considered... well, it usually came back to
haunt people, or at least break them down to their component atoms.
Bonsai Kittens were a Bad Idea.
Granted, the basic idea was sound - abjectly
depraved and sick, but sound. Vapula
has always been interested in tweaking the capabilities of his demons: biotech
has been getting sexy lately; and there is something to be said for making the
whole process modular. Sure, the Genius
Archangel could have grown a vatbrain or twenty - there's nothing wrong with
vatbrains, Vapula swears by them - but why bother when nature will do it for
you? All one really needs is a steady
supply of self-sufficient biological units. There are certainly so many kittens
around that nobody's going to miss a gross or two.
Luckily, Vaputech cracked the problem of direct
neural interface a long time ago, to the point where it's practically
safe. Getting fitted with a special
connector jack is child's play for Technology - they hardly ever spontaneously
combust anymore - so all that was necessary was to design an adequate
containment system for the Bonsai Kittens, and the project was ready to go. It worked, too.
This is where the problem starts to crop up.
You see, the basic idea was to essentially give the
lucky 'volunteer' two free Forces that wouldn't count towards normal
Characteristic limits and/or maximum number of Forces. This was actually successful: while the
extra Forces do not affect Body and Soul Hits, they can raise a
Characteristic above 12 and Corporeal/Celestial Forces above 6. The skills and Song that came along for the
ride are similarly not subject to the normal level caps. It takes (9 - Intelligence) days to learn
how to integrate the added bonuses (Intelligence roll to successfully use a
Bonsai Kitten during this time), but after that success is automatic. Astoundingly, this works fine.
Now, the fact that a Bonsai Kitten acts as a Very
Addictive, Severe Withdrawal (constant) drug might seem to be an actual
problem. Nonsense. Vapula designed the things that way: he
didn't want his subjects to accidentally lose his latest inventions, and direct
electrical simulation of the pleasure centers of the brain is a proven method
for assuring that such things never happen.
True, this can cause social problems, as it's hard to hide the fact that
one has a kitten in a glass jar stuck to his or her body, but that's why they
invented turbans, long coats and very large wigs. Demons are supposed to show initiative, no?
Admittedly, the mental effects were...
disappointing. One unforeseen problem
(see, we're getting to actual problems now) with pouring a kitten into a jar
and never letting it out again is that nobody ever thought to consider the
kitten's opinion in the matter. They
universally didn't like it, to make a severe understatement. Indeed, they hated it, to the point that
every Bonsai Kitten is both transcendentally pissed off (Angry) and suspicious
of the rest of existence (Paranoid). Of
course, even if the researchers had thought of it, they probably would have
just shrugged. Who cares what a kitten
thinks?
Well, you should when you plug said kitten into
somebody else's medulla oblongata. It
took a while [(Celestial Forces) months] for the test subjects to start being
Angry and Paranoid themselves (read: 'just enough time for this disaster to
start going into formal production'), and guess what? The imposed Discords also aren't subject to normal
caps. Seeing as a lot of the subjects
were pretty bright to begin with, a lot of them were able to successfully Run
Away, and not a few of them are now doing a pretty good imitation of megalomania.
Tracking them down has been a bit of a chore, and
hampered by the fact that the forces of Heaven are not particularly amused by any
of this. Animals is frothing at the
mouth on general principles, while the rest of the Host are finding the test
subjects to be especially irritating pains in their collective necks. Heck, the situation made Novalis
frown and say, 'Oh, dear'. Demons hate
it when she does that: it carries precisely the same overtones of dread as
hearing the 'KA-CHINK!' of a pump action shotgun behind you - for very
good reasons. Never try to piss off the
Archangel of Flowers. You might get
deeply unlucky, and succeed.
But all of that isn't the entire problem. There's one additional wrinkle, one final
bit of icing on the metaphorical cake.
You see, there was no theoretical limit to the number of Bonsai Kittens
that could be attached to a standard vessel.
There's at least one 18 Force (natural) Balseraph out there with six of
the Damned Things hanging on for the ride...
Again, well, it seemed a good idea at the time.
*For the record, puppies didn't respond well to the
anti-growth drugs, they couldn't stop the bunny rabbits from suffering instant
heart attacks, white tiger and panda cubs were too rare to be useful, koalas
had an unacceptably high life support cost (so did baby harp seals),
Christopher gets really, really intense when people start using babies for this
sort of thing and humpback whale calves were just too damn big.