[Tecumseh]

Did you ask and I missed it or have you not asked yet? If the latter, feel free to ask but more time will pass and the boat will get closer to shore.

[rednblack]

From my last IC:

When Rhodes finishing outlining how great his new life would be at Ares, including financial and housing compensation, James says, "So, the other Agent Case is currently at grade O-6?  That sounds like a wiz deal, but isn't it more for the Agent Case currently in Detroit?  After all, there is only the one body, but currently two minds which would like to make use of it."

[Tecumseh]

It sounds like you are going with Rhodes. If so, give me your general plan for the next five minutes, five days, and five weeks. High level is fine. Are you planning on returning to active service or will you try to extract yourselves when their guard is down?

[rednblack]

Despite Rhodes chilling answer to James' question, James will go with him. 

Next 5 minutes: go with Rhodes.

Next 5 days: get housing, fill out paperwork, do preliminary testing (physical and psychological), spar with Rhodes (if he's up for it), have the occasional discussion with Illeana with the faucets turned on and the trid set real high about what's actually going on.

Next 5 weeks: I'm torn here.  I don't know that I'm really up for Jason Bourne returns to the CIA despite all the shit they pulled on him, but on the other hand, James almost returned to Ares in Tabula Rasa, and it was the prospect of losing Illeana which kept him with the group.  I don't know that he shares her "gilded cage" thoughts on the subject, and being close with Ares -- read being under Ares' thumb -- has the prospect of answering a lot of his questions about who he is and where he came from.  Seeing Justin would also be very important to him.  Also, as evidenced by their past 6 months or so together, James really isn't built for retirement, and he would be eager to return to field work. 

I think we'll go right now with playing ball with Ares, and see what kind of missions they have for him.  I also think that James has been programmed to accept Ares' worldview despite his amnesia -- I've been working on an internal monologue for James for awhile that addresses this and hope to get it up soon -- so there will likely need to be an outside influence that pulls him in another direction.  Or, he might just find life back in the corp to be way too stifling than he is prepared to accept, but my guess is that Illeana will find it so before he does.

[Tecumseh]

There are a couple different directions I can go with this. I need to think on it for a day to decide which will be the most interesting and the most fun. I know what Ryo would do but he had a flair for the dramatic.

[Tecumseh]

James is enduring a unending series of psychological tests. For the next IC, please answer the following for James:

Battery #1
- How do upsetting problems generally make you feel?
- When you get angry, do you have trouble staying in control?
- How do you typically deal with failure?
- Have you ever been deliberately cruel to an animal?
- Would you consider yourself subjectively firm or objectively flexible?
- Would you rather ride on a train, dance in the rain, or feel no pain?

Battery #2
- It’s your birthday. Someone gives you a calfskin wallet. How do you react?
- You’ve got a little boy. He shows you his butterfly collection plus the killing jar. What do you do?
- You’re watching television. Suddenly you realize there’s a wasp crawling on your arm. What do you do?
- You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, it’s crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t, not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that?
- Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about your mother.
- You're reading a magazine. You come across a full-page nude photo of a girl. You show it to your girlfriend. She likes it so much, she hangs it on your bedroom wall. The girl is lying on a bearskin rug. How do you react?
- You impregnant a woman who runs off with your best friend, then decides to terminate the pregnancy. What do you do?
- You're watching a stage play. A banquet is in progress. The guests are enjoying an appetizer of raw oysters. The entree consists of boiled dog stuffed with rice. The raw oysters are less acceptable to you than a dish of boiled dog. Why is that?

[rednblack]

OH shit, Tec.  This is great but will probably take me a day or so to get up. I'm also going to do a series of Composure tests, losing a die each time to see how James holds up, an partly bc I really wanna answer about the tortoise like Leon.

But I think James will be eager to please.

[rednblack]

I rolled a Lifting Test just for flavor: Deadlift: 13d6t5 5

First Battery, I answered the first two questions, and then rolled Composure
Composure: 12d6t5 2
Looks like he's getting a little testy on the third, and fourth.

Let's see how he handles the last question.
Composure: 11d6t5 3
Better.

For the second battery I'm resetting James' pool, but I'm going to make a test to start things off.
Composure: 12d6t5 4
A little exercise seemed to do the trick on clearing his mind.

After the first two questions.
Composure: 11d6t5 3

After the first four.
Composure: 10d6t5 1
ooh, not necessarily the one I wanted to go low on, but this could be fun.

And for the last two.
Composure: 9d6t5 4
Pulling it out there at the end.

ETA: I missed the question about being cruel to animals. I'll update my IC in a bit to address that one. On phone right now

[rednblack]

IC updated.  Let me say that I found this incredibly challenging to answer these questions in the head of a character, much less an amnesiac.  Fun challenging, but definitely challenging.

Add in the layers of him trying to answer correctly and not sound crazy, and . . .

[Tecumseh]

First response is up. There's a lot to cover so I decided to break it into (at least) two pieces.

You're welcome to post again at this point but it's optional. There's another post coming that will describe the weekend's testing regimen.

[Tecumseh]

Another long IC is up. Ball is back in your court.

[rednblack]

Wow.  Ok, so I expected James to head crash at some point, but I certainly didn't expect it so soon, given what I thought was his levels of nanites.  This most likely makes for a speedy retreat from Ares, as I don't see them putting him on active duty now that his consciousness is compromised.

A note on ritual spellcasting and SINs, since James already had a SIN, I would assume that they already had a link to find him the first go-around.  Does this mean that bio samples have a shelf-life that was exceeded, or was that for story purposes?

I think I'm going to play this as deny everything, but it will take a bit to get my IC up.

[Tecumseh]

The books are not clear as to what constitutes a high level of nanites. Is a Nanite Volume of 6 considered high, or is that just medium while 10 is high? There's not a stated cap to Nanite Volume, so it's basically up to the GM to wing it. In this case, James might conclude that the extreme nature of the testing - both mental and physical - might have contributed to his interludes.

James did have a SIN before. He might conclude that Ares didn't try looking for him because his other self had reported in relatively quickly after the separation. Ares might have reasonably concluded that his body wasn't going to survive (especially in winter conditions) without its spirit so they didn't bother spending the time to find an expensive but empty husk, or reasoned that a dead husk couldn't be located by magic. Alternatively, James might wonder if they did try to search but separation of his body and spirit somehow interfered with the process. Or maybe the presence of Illeana or the lingering effects of the obelisk interfered with things. Magic is an unpredictable force, to be sure.

Speaking of magic, James will remember Illeana mentioning that Dr. Personette was running Analyze Truth. James would assume that is still true. If you want to roll Con, you should also roll Willpower+Logic to potentially beat the Detection spell that may or may not be active. Of course, James won't know for sure whether he's beaten it or not. James' Willpower is good due to Cyber Singularity Seeker, and he has Edge as well. (Mathematically, James should pre-Edge rather than post-Edge with this dice pool.

[rednblack]

So there is no shelf life on biological samples for Ritual magic?

Strictly speaking, James hasn't lied to the doctors.  Even so, a Con test is certainly in order, and I'll toss in a WIL+LOG+Edge test, as "Detailed Information" for Analyze Truth could well be that the subject isn't telling the whole story. 

For Con I have: CHA (5) + Con (6) + Fast Talk (2) + Tailored Pheromones (2) =15 dice.  There are probably a host of Situational Modifiers: James amnesia could be plausible evidence, and James is moving the dialog forward to negate Subject has Time to Evaluate the Situation, but these doctors are pros, so I'll leave the final call to the GM.  My guess is that I'll be losing some dice before it's all said and done.
Con: 15d6t5 4
Let's throw an Edge at that.  He's got hits to spare on the Social Limit.
Edge Re-roll: 11d6t5 4
8 hits is James' Social Limit without taking the Ares workout suit into account.

For resisting Analyze Truth I have: LOG (4) + WIL (7) + Edge (5) = 16 dice.
V. Analyze Truth: 16d6h5 7
I feel pretty good about that.

James is at 3/5 Edge.

[Tecumseh]

Those are good rolls. James does have plausible evidence (amnesia, +2) but the scientists have time to evaluate the situation (-1) and are suspicious by nature (-1) so that balances out.

For the Con roll, we do need to subtract dice for James' Social Stress quality. It means that the Edge reroll should only be 9 dice, not 11, so that subtracts 1 hit. You still have 7, and James is feeling pretty confident about his poker face.

We should explore how James' Social Stress quality is making James feel now that he is "home" (at least for the moment).

What does James know about the shelf life of biological samples? Logic 4 + Biology 4 + Spec 2: 10d6t5 4 hits

James doesn't know what the viability requirements are for ritual magic, but he does know that with oocyte cryopreservation that human embryos can be successfully frozen at -196 Celsius for over 10 years and still produce a successful pregnancy.

James' service records indicate the following education/service history:
Ages 18-19: post-secondary education and Knight-Errant Academy
Ages 20-24: Knight Errant
Ages 25-28: Ares Firewatch
Age 29: medical recovery and rehabilitation and retraining
Ages 30-32: Ares Instigator

James is unsure when biological samples might have been collected and what their viability might still be. If the samples were collected at the beginning of his Knight-Errant service then they might not be in great shape. If new samples were collected during his medical recovery four years ago then they would still be highly viable.

I'll post ICly soon, hopefully today.