Temptation.
This one concept has been both the cause of Mankind's greatness, and equally the cause of its greatest failures. Temptation takes many forms. Human and
not-so human. Physical and mental. It can encourage us to leap to heights of greatness when the opportunity comes knocking, or it can suggest paths to power
that ignore the needs and feelings of others to satisfy our own base urges. Temptation struck when I was working on the plans for the Nem staff.
I didn't even consider trying to patent the thing. By all rights, NCSoft and Paragon Studios owned all rights to the thing, but if I was actually going to
do what I was half-thinking of doing, I'd need to be able to fix the thing down the road. And as Foxfire, I'd been taught a basic course in weapon
maintenance for all the equipment I'd started with. The Blackwand I left in whatever pocket dimension City of Heroes characters put their stuff... I guess
my stuff, now. I mean, it may be one thing to play a darkforce projector as a game character, but quite another to
have an anti-life energy literally seething at your fingertips...
Suddenly I was a lot happier I hadn't been playing my other favorite character, the dark/dark defender Silhouette.
But anyway...
The phone started ringing as I was carefully sketching what I saw inside the Nem Staff's collectiion chambers. This stuff was amazingly intricate but also
pretty heavy-handed, if that made any sense. Big bulk Rennaissance level technology but packed in very tightly. In some places, I referred to my memories of
classes I'd taken on the Nem staff to fill in the bits I didn't want to tinker with here. (And yeah, the more I did this, the less invasive all these
memories seemed. I should probably have been more concerned about that, but you can only stay paranoid for just so
long before it becomes a permanent state. So I decided to just accept it and run with it.)
When I picked up the phone, I could sense all the electronic activity within the handset. It was a portable, so there was a lot of additional transmission and
amplification technology in it. And I could sense all of it just waiting for me to reach out and close a single connection. I thought about it (and checked the
phone to see if I wanted to answer it), then experimentally willed the connection to close.
The phone switched to answer mode.
Shortly after the disappointing temp agency call, I realized something. A lot of the security technology used in the world is designed to act as a front-end
preventing access to the machinery behind it. ATM's for instance use the card recognition system to prove you are allowed access to the money. But the
money machine itself is actually a separate component. Just make the right connections, and it would spit out every
bill in the hopper, no questions asked. And I'm not exactly rich.
See what I mean about temptation? To my credit, I'd like to say that I eventually turned away from the idea as unworthy of the responsibility the powers
imposed. But while gimmicking an ATM was unethical, I eventually turned my speculation to the slot machines in the Casino de
Hull. By anyone's estimation, slot machines were rigged to begin with. Would that be wrong?
The rest of the afternoon laying out the specs for the Nem Staff passed while I debated the pros and cons of misusing my power. I realized at that point that
the whole idea of good vs. evil wasn't so clearly cut. I eventually decided those ideas were "evil" and I wasn't going to do them. But not
everyone would have so sharply defined a moral compass. And that didn't keep me from trying to come up with other ideas along the way, that I also threw
out.
But damn... I'm pretty sure some of those would have worked...
---
Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.
This one concept has been both the cause of Mankind's greatness, and equally the cause of its greatest failures. Temptation takes many forms. Human and
not-so human. Physical and mental. It can encourage us to leap to heights of greatness when the opportunity comes knocking, or it can suggest paths to power
that ignore the needs and feelings of others to satisfy our own base urges. Temptation struck when I was working on the plans for the Nem staff.
I didn't even consider trying to patent the thing. By all rights, NCSoft and Paragon Studios owned all rights to the thing, but if I was actually going to
do what I was half-thinking of doing, I'd need to be able to fix the thing down the road. And as Foxfire, I'd been taught a basic course in weapon
maintenance for all the equipment I'd started with. The Blackwand I left in whatever pocket dimension City of Heroes characters put their stuff... I guess
my stuff, now. I mean, it may be one thing to play a darkforce projector as a game character, but quite another to
have an anti-life energy literally seething at your fingertips...
Suddenly I was a lot happier I hadn't been playing my other favorite character, the dark/dark defender Silhouette.
But anyway...
The phone started ringing as I was carefully sketching what I saw inside the Nem Staff's collectiion chambers. This stuff was amazingly intricate but also
pretty heavy-handed, if that made any sense. Big bulk Rennaissance level technology but packed in very tightly. In some places, I referred to my memories of
classes I'd taken on the Nem staff to fill in the bits I didn't want to tinker with here. (And yeah, the more I did this, the less invasive all these
memories seemed. I should probably have been more concerned about that, but you can only stay paranoid for just so
long before it becomes a permanent state. So I decided to just accept it and run with it.)
When I picked up the phone, I could sense all the electronic activity within the handset. It was a portable, so there was a lot of additional transmission and
amplification technology in it. And I could sense all of it just waiting for me to reach out and close a single connection. I thought about it (and checked the
phone to see if I wanted to answer it), then experimentally willed the connection to close.
The phone switched to answer mode.
Shortly after the disappointing temp agency call, I realized something. A lot of the security technology used in the world is designed to act as a front-end
preventing access to the machinery behind it. ATM's for instance use the card recognition system to prove you are allowed access to the money. But the
money machine itself is actually a separate component. Just make the right connections, and it would spit out every
bill in the hopper, no questions asked. And I'm not exactly rich.
See what I mean about temptation? To my credit, I'd like to say that I eventually turned away from the idea as unworthy of the responsibility the powers
imposed. But while gimmicking an ATM was unethical, I eventually turned my speculation to the slot machines in the Casino de
Hull. By anyone's estimation, slot machines were rigged to begin with. Would that be wrong?
The rest of the afternoon laying out the specs for the Nem Staff passed while I debated the pros and cons of misusing my power. I realized at that point that
the whole idea of good vs. evil wasn't so clearly cut. I eventually decided those ideas were "evil" and I wasn't going to do them. But not
everyone would have so sharply defined a moral compass. And that didn't keep me from trying to come up with other ideas along the way, that I also threw
out.
But damn... I'm pretty sure some of those would have worked...
---
Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.