To top it all off, Windows 95 came out, with all of it's own interesting promises and problems. Then the first Exemplar burst on the scene. Things went off the charts. Serious changes started happening. People started taking the warnings of the apocalypse seriously. Some people are still waiting, and they insist it's for a good reason.

What are Exemplars? Good question. They appear to be, by all accounts, regular people who can do extraordinary things.

How do they do these extraordinary things? Very good question, one that the scientific community still can't answer although they'd like to.

What triggers an Exemplar? Usually a crisis of some sort, one that would ordinarily require therapy of the physical and/or psychological variety to recover from for quite some time. Only in this case, the Exemplars talk about having a moment where they suddenly felt...more. More aware of everything, more capable of understanding their world, more powerful, more in control. Then the moment kinda passed, but they could do things they couldn't before.

Some of the changes were subtle, most were not. Some could fly, some could stretch, some had charm and brainpower to spare. Some changed into things, or had real-life imaginary friends. Some could breathe fire or clouds of hallucination-inducing smoke. Some were brick houses, and some had actual metal bodies. Some could pull themselves together after a nasty accident, piece by piece. Some were awesome, and some were scary.In short, this is my version of Aberrant, only with less mutations and more focus on what it would be like with everyday people having weird powers. Also, no nodes or simple (?!) power explanations; no one knows how they do what they do. No one knows why they're manifesting these powers.

Exemplar
Sources: Exemplar (Conduit, Life Force, Psi, Unknown): 10
Permissions: Super (15)
Intrinsics: Resilient, No Willpower No Way, Allergic to Schizymox (Will-draining, Uncommon),
Restriction: No Hard, Wiggle, or extra dice to Cool or Stability (-10)
Total: 15

Red: 2
Gold: 1 (Fire-breathing porn-starlets, ho!)
Blue: 1 (Maybe 2, but no one knows)
Black: 2 (1 for non-Exemplars)

Some explanations: Exemplars are universally vulnerable to the drug Schizymox, which is the only thing that can dampen their powers and, in prolonged doses, can actually trigger a fatal reaction. It can be inhaled, ingested or injected, and some versions include a chemical that allows it to be absorbed through the skin. It's supposed to be rare (government-use only, and usually military only), but crime and the free market will out. On regular humans, it simulates an LSD trip with concomitant random impulsive urges (similar to a schizophrenic episode), thus making it a "party drug" that has a high street value and incurs harsher sentences than heroin or cocaine.

Exemplars are forbidden to purchase Hard, Wiggle or regular dice above 5 for Cool and Stability. They may purchase one Expert Die for each, maximum, and that cannot bring the score for either one above 5. The reason for this is that Exemplars, being regular people in unusual circumstances, risk getting traumatized by either stuff they did, or stuff that was done to them. Thus, if they deal with something pretty nasty, in addition to having to make a Cool +Stability roll, if they fail, they have to run the hell away or lose half their Willpower and check off a box on the appropriate NEMESIS-style Madness Meter. Or...they take a dot of Alienation and keep going.

What's Alienation? Well, having a whole lot of power does weird things to people, especially when you add the pressure of responsibility on top of it. Some people cope, some people break down...and then there are those who seem to stop giving a damn. For Exemplars, this is more so than for average people. Alienation is a feeling of distance from regular people, a sense that they are inferior and of a different, lesser species entirely. It is a sense of abandoning your responsibilities while reveling in your godlike power. Or, it's simply a loss of empathy for regular people after some frustrating episodes. But it builds up, and it changes you unless you stop it.

If you get Alienation, you can use it as a backup dice pool in circumstances, adding rolled dice from it to your regular roll to increase the chance of matches. Doing so, however, adds to your Alienation pool for each matched number you get. This is bad because every social roll you make with a normal person or an Exemplar with a lower Alienation score has to beat the width of your Alienation pool. Alienation maxes out at 10. Once it hits 10, they all get cashed in to buy a Locked Die for Cool.

A Locked Die is like a Hard Die, except it cannot get dropped. Also, the negative consequences of a Hard Die are even more present. Thus, a Locked Die in Cool (for example) causes you to suffer a -1 penalty for dealing positively with people, either Exemplars who don't have Alienation or just regular folks. The next 10 Alienation buys you a second Locked Die for Cool. You can continue doing this until you get up to 10 in your Cool stat.

Congratulations, you are now a hyper-powered sociopath. From this point on, everytime you cash in your Alienation, you end up buying things like Monstrous (worth 8 points), Brute/Frail, etc. You can also buy Locked Dice for your Intimidation skill (which means you always freak people out), or Interrogation, or...you get the idea. You may also end up buying Flaws for your powers.

It costs 5 xp/wp to buy off a point of Alienation, and it requires a scene where the character is either in therapy, or doing some good deed, or reconnecting with people. Buying off Locked dice requires 10 xp/wp. Buying off negative Intrinsics costs the same as their negative value in xp/wp.

It is important to note that sociopathy for Exemplars has to be earned. There is no way that anyone who has Antisocial Personality Disorder or similar mental problems will become an Exemplar. For some reason, they just aren't capable of it. No one knows why, but every Alienated Exemplar started off as a more-or-less normal human being.


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