Teleinformatics

= Teleinformatics =

= Interview = Teleinformatic abilities that boost an agent’s interviewing skills are what most people think of as psychic powers. Rather than boosting an agent’s own abilities, these powers can read the information from other people’s minds. The highest echelons bridge the barrier between mind and matter to get a suspect to spill his guts. Though she picks up the mental echoes of other people’s minds, affecting those minds is significantly harder, broad attacks wielded without finesse. Unlike psychics in books or on television, she cannot guide or sway a person’s thoughts. She makes up for that with sheer mental force, directing crushing emotional pressure against her suspects.

• Just One More Thing
There’s always one question that a suspect doesn’t want anyone to ask. An interview is a stressful time, and that question bubbles up to the surface of the suspect’s thoughts. If the agent concentrates, he can listen out for a phrase in his mind’s ear, along with an empathic twinge of guilt.

When he hears it, he knows just what to ask.

Cost: 1 point of bashing damage

Action: Instant

Dice Pool: Teleinformatics + Subterfuge

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The agent hears something along with a pang of guilt, but he’s not hearing it from the suspect. The Storyteller should give her two or three words relating to a guilty secret of another character in the same area. Further rolls to interview the suspect suffer a -2 modifier.

Failure: The agent doesn’t hear anything useful.

Success: The agent hears two or three words, but it’s up to him to work them into a question. The Storyteller should furnish the character with a two or three word prompt. Any roll involving questioning the suspect on that subject gets an additional +2 bonus.

Exceptional Success: The agent hits just the right question. The bonus increases to +3.

•• Polygraph
Sometimes, asking the right question isn’t enough. By tuning in to the same frequency as her suspect, an agent can read the emotions straight from the surface of his target’s mind. While it’s hard to direct an interview based just on the subject’s emotional state, listening out for specific instances of guilt and shame when asking questions or stating how the agent believes things happened is a damn fine way to detect a witness’s lies.

This power is used to enhance an Interrogation task. The agent using this power enhances his ability as the interrogator.

Cost: 1 Willpower + 1 point of bashing damage

Action: Contested; resistance is reflexive

Dice Pool: Teleinformatics + Persuasion vs. target’s Stamina + Resolve

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The agent misreads his subject, seeing guilt when none is really present. He suffers a -1 modifier on his first roll, a -2 on his second, and so on until the interrogation is over.

Failure: The agent doesn’t tune in to his subject’s emotions.

Success: The agent senses spikes of guilt, fear, and shame — or deceit, or even pride. Whatever he senses, he knows how it relates to the questions he asked. The character gains a bonus to all Interrogation rolls equal to the successes gained over the subject. This bonus lasts for the rest of the scene. This bonus is doubled on any Subterfuge or Empathy rolls meant to sniff out a lie.

Exceptional Success: The psychic interrogation provides a paroxysm of pleasure: the character regains the spent Willpower.

••• Synchronization
VASCU psychics go beyond just reading emotions and snippets of thought. The agency maintains a number of empaths, people who can read a subject’s mind so thoroughly that they share the subject’s thoughts and memories. In effect, the agent makes a copy of the subject’s mind within his own.

It’s a dangerous process, but the easiest way to get answers from dangerous slashers — including “Why did you kill them?” and “Where are the missing children?” Due to the effects of a dramatic failure, the Storyteller should make the roll for this power.

Cost: 1 Willpower + 1 point of lethal damage

Action: Instant

Dice Pool: Teleinformatics + Empathy minus subject’s Resolve

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The agent gets in synch with her suspect’s mind, but a part of her target lurks within her mind even after the contact is over, biding its time until it takes control of the agent. The agent maintains contact initially as if she had rolled three successes. Every day over the course of the following week after the contact is made, the Storyteller should roll the target’s Presence + Resolve in an extended action.

Once the Storyteller rolls more successes than the agent’s Resolve + Composure, the target’s mind takes control of the agent’s body for one day per dot of the target’s Willpower. When the target is in control, the player has two options. She may relinquish control of her character to the Storyteller for the duration, so as to remain ignorant of whatever her character has done. Alternately, the Storyteller and player may work together so that the player can portray the “possessed” agent.

Failure: The agent can’t get synchronized with the subject’s mind.

Success: The agent copies the subject’s mind. Each success gives the agent enough time to answer one question posed by herself or another character. The Storyteller should provide the answer, along with enough context for the answer to make sense. In between questions, the agent experiences life as the subject does. She suffers the same negative modifiers as the suspect, as well as any derangements that the suspect possesses. The “copy” of the slasher’s persona exists for a number of hours equal to the slasher’s Resolve score. During this time, the character may experience certain elements of the slasher’s persona, even down to physical maladies (if the slasher has an atrophied left arm, the agent’s own arm may grow rigid and useless — not atrophied, but physically without much use during that time).

Exceptional Success: In addition to the effects of a success, the agent can attempt to record one Skill that the subject possesses. His player “trades in” a number of successes on his roll equal to the rating of the Skill he wants to borrow.

The “borrowed” Skill lasts for a number of hours equal to the slasher’s Resolve score; if the agent doesn’t have any dots in that Skill herself then her rolls using it do not benefit from 10-again.

•••• The Talon
Focusing her power, the agent disrupts her target’s thoughts. She focuses on a point or talon slowly pressing into her victim’s head. It seeks out sources of guilt and shame, flaring those emotions without any stimulus. The attack scares its target, making him more liable to tell the truth when the agent asks a question.

Cost: 1 point of lethal damage

Action: Instant

Dice Pool: Teleinformatics + Intimidation minus subject’s Composure

Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The talon rebounds from the target’s mind and embeds itself in the agent’s mind. Her rolls suffer a -2 modifier for the remainder of the scene.

Failure: The agent can’t focus clearly enough to manifest this power.

Success: The point of pressure works its way through the target’s mind. Each success on the activation roll inflicts a -1 penalty on any Mental or Social rolls that the target makes (to a maximum of -5). This penalty lasts until the end of the scene. If the agent makes a show of using this power in an interrogation, she gains two bonus dice on related rolls.

Exceptional Success: The talon pricks the subject’s pain centers on its way through his brain. In addition to the effects of a success, the target takes two points of bashing damage.

••••• Tactical Co-Ordination
Some VASCU agents develop incredible telepathic abilities. By developing a working duplicate of their teammates’ minds, this allows them to predict what their allies will do. She can use this duplicated mind model to communicate with her teammates. Some agents liken the effect to rumors of “twins’ telepathy,” though nobody’s yet demonstrated that effect to anyone’s satisfaction.

These agents are too useful for VASCU to leave behind. Rumor has is that one such agent had his brain transferred to a life-support system because his cell was too used to their instantaneous communication. The dice pool to activate this power is reduced by one per character that the agent wishes to network, excluding herself.

Cost: 1 Willpower + 1 point of lethal damage

Action: Instant

Dice Pool: Teleinformatics + Brawl -1 per other agent

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The agent’s mental models intermix, sending the wrong signals to the wrong minds. Every agent that would have been linked suffers a -2 modifier to all rolls from psychic static until the end of the scene.

Failure: The agent cannot link her allies’ minds.

Success: While the agent focuses, her team benefits from her network. Members can communicate instantly and silently as a reflexive action. Like using radios, all members of the mind-link can hear anything that another linked mind “says.” In addition, the team can share their Skills. Any time an agent needs to make a roll, she gains a +1 bonus for every member of the link who possesses the same Skill at a higher rating.

The link works in a radius of 50 yards per dot of Willpower centered on the agent using this power, and lasts for five minutes per success or until the agent loses consciousness. The level of concentration required to maintain the link means the agent cannot apply her Defense on the turn that she activates this power.

Example: Agents Partridge, Quire, and Rooney are participating in a mental link. Partridge is cornered by a slasher. As he’s not a full agent, Partridge isn’t used to his own gun — he’s only got one dot of Firearms. Fortunately, Quire spends his time off at the range (Firearms 2) and Rooney’s been through full Special Agent training (also Firearms 2). Partridge makes his roll with a two-dice bonus.

Exceptional Success: The agents’ minds link together smoothly. The psychic doesn’t lose her Defense when activating the power, and the link remains up for the duration rolled even if the agent is unconscious — as long as she’s still alive.

= Investigation = Investigatory abilities heighten an agent’s ability to read a crime scene — or any location — and understand what happened there. All Investigation powers rely on pure information processing rather than actually sending an agent’s senses through time. As such, while she may pick up on hints and evidence that she’s not consciously recognized, if there’s absolutely no evidence of something occurring at a scene then she will not know that it happened. Note that this limitation is rare — modern forensic science demonstrates that it’s nearly impossible to destroy all evidence without leaving a trace.

• Psychometry
By holding an object in his hand, an agent can understand both its form and its function. He can tell the specific brand of a condom, knows if a briefcase has a hidden compartment, and instinctively understands when someone last fired a gun. His ability doesn’t limit itself to man-made objects — while dipping his finger in a pool of blood won’t give him the victim’s name, he knows her blood type, and will instinctively know if he ever encounters it again.

Likewise, he can match fingerprints between two objects through this power, rather than waiting for a crime-lab. Using this power requires an agent to make skin contact with the object, potentially destroying any fingerprints and polluting DNA evidence.

He suffers a -1 penalty for every point of Size that the object has above 2.

Cost: 1 point of bashing damage

Action: Instant

Dice Pool: Teleinformatics + Crafts

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The agent wipes all psychic traces from the item. He doesn’t read anything from the item and cannot use this power on it again.

Failure: The agent gets nothing from the object.

Success: The agent understands what the object is and when it was last used for its intended purpose. The Storyteller should furnish any relevant details, which may provide a +2 bonus to later Investigation rolls. If he uses this power on two objects carrying the same person’s fingerprints, he knows that they were used by the same person — but not who that person was. He can’t just shake the guy’s hand to confirm his suspicion.

Exceptional Success: The agent’s instinctively understands the object. If he comes across another of the same type — blood from the same person, a used condom of the same brand — while using any other Teleinformatics power, he automatically knows that the two items are related.

•• Scene Read
Sometimes, VASCU doesn’t have time for forensic examiners to comb every inch of a scene. When a serial killer snatches a girl, every second is a second he could use to butcher her and the agent needs clues fast. A psychic with this ability unleashes her stress on the scene, mentally browbeating it like she would a suspect who didn’t talk.

Using this power replaces the standard roll for examining a crime scene with an Instant action.

Cost: 1 point of bashing damage

Action: Instant

Dice Pool: Teleinformatics + Investigation Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The agent studies the scene, but jumps to the wrong conclusion before she hears everything.

Failure: The agent gets nothing from the area. She’ll have to comb the scene manually and hope she’s still got time.

Success: Though the agent only appears to glance around the scene, she has a basic idea of what’s going on. The Storyteller should give her the same information as if she had rolled half the necessary successes to examine a crime scene. She cannot use this power twice on the same scene.

Exceptional Success: While this power doesn’t replace forensic analysis, the agent knows everything that the scene has to tell her. The Storyteller should give her all available information.

••• Speed of Thought
Though the agent’s body is as slow as ever, his mind works at inhuman speeds. He’s hyper-aware of everything, from the way the loose floorboard behind his left foot stops before it’s fully bent — indicating something underneath it — to the tensing of a slasher’s tendon right before he pulls the trigger.

Other people who see him dodge bullets or instinctively uncover a serial killer’s storehouse of bodies may wonder if he’s precognitive, but the hunter’s just working the scene as fast as his mind allows.

Cost: 2 points of lethal damage

Action: Instant

Dice Pool: Teleinformatics + Athletics

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The agent’s enhanced senses overwhelm him for a second. He cannot take any action on this turn, and his Defense is halved against incoming attacks.

Failure: Despite his enhanced reaction time, the agent just can’t process everything coming at him fast enough to make a difference.

Success: Starting with the next turn, the agent adds his Teleinformatics dots to his Initiative. He may also use the higher of his Dexterity or Wits as his Defense. As a final bonus, he can apply his increased Defense against firearms attacks. This effect lasts for one turn per success (maximum 5), and can only be used once per day.

Exceptional Success: The character overrides his body’s limits. Increase his Speed by his Teleinformatics dots for the duration of the effect.

•••• Postcognition
It doesn’t matter how well you describe a crime scene or reconstruct what happened, it’s not the same as witnessing the crime. Without seeing what happened, an agent possesses only knowledge without understanding. With this power, she creates a model of the crime that’s as real to her as was to the people there.

She’s there, able to “play back” the crucial five minutes about which she has most evidence, in order to see what really happened. The agent must be present at the scene or at a faithful reconstruction to use this ability. The Storyteller should make the final roll for this power.

Cost: 1 Willpower + 1 point of lethal damage

Action: Instant

Dice Pool: Teleinformatics + Science

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The agent synthesizes the information presented and comes up with something wildly off-base. The Storyteller should allow the player to ask between one and three questions to which she should supply erroneous or misleading answers.

Failure: The agent just can’t fit the pieces together. She’s wasted her time.

Success: The agent reconstructs what actually happened, which runs back and forwards before her eyes. The player may ask the Storyteller one question per success rolled, which he must answer (within reason). Additionally, further Investigation rolls regarding anything in the vision gain a +2 bonus until the end of the day.

Exceptional Success: In addition to extra questions, the character notices something that sheds new light on her investigation. The Storyteller should tell her (unprompted) a significant detail or clue about which the player did not ask.

Suggested Modifiers

+1 Agent spent significant time at scene (6 or more hours).

-1 Agent spent less than three hours at the scene.

-2 Agent only skim-read forensics reports.

-2 Agent supervised evidence gathering but did not sweep the scene.

-4 Agent is not at the scene when using this power.

-4 Agent uses this power within first hour at scene

••••• Hall of Mirrors
The logical progression from investigating what did happen is investigating what might happen. The agent withdraws into herself, shutting out the outside world until she arrives in the Hall of Mirrors. The Hall is an alien chamber studded with portals that shine like mirrors covered in a thin film of oil.

Staring into one, an agent sees the future. Not what will definitely happen, but the most likely cause of events based on everything that the agent knows, hopes, and fears.

The visions never show more than a week into the future. VASCU claims that the Hall of Mirrors isn’t a real place. According to the top brass, the Hall is a shared hallucination, an artifact of the human mind trying to extrapolate every possible causal link and derive the most probable overall outcome.

The explanation doesn’t hold water with agents who have been to the Hall. If it was a shared hallucination, how come every agent who has been to the Hall describes it exactly alike, down to the strange geometric pattern on the floor and minute imperfections in each mirror? Some even claim to have seen other agents in the Hall at the same time — even though they were half-a-world apart. The Storyteller should make the final roll for this power.

Cost: 1 point of aggravated damage

Action: Instant

Dice Pool: Teleinformatics + Occult

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The agent sees a strange future that doesn’t sit right with her. The Storyteller can declare that one of the agent’s actions in the next 24 hours is a dramatic failure before the player rolls the dice.

Failure: The agent makes it to the Hall of Mirrors, but none of the viewing portals show anything but inky blackness.

Success: The agent finds portals that show possible futures, and can see how they pan out over the next few days and how they relate to her. Unlike other means of telling the future, this power doesn’t hide the future behind metaphor, but it’s very much the edited highlights — like the preview of next week’s episode at the end of a TV drama.

The player can “spend” her successes on this roll in two ways: first, she can re-roll one action, keeping whichever roll she chooses; and secondly she may ask the Storyteller one yes/no question relating to her immediate situation, which he must answer. Any unspent successes are lost after 24 hours.

Exceptional Success: The agent notices something affecting a cellmate in one of the visions. She may spend a success to allow another player to reroll a single action. That player chooses which roll to keep.

= Research = VASCU agents who awaken research-based powers access information from a wide range of sources, even when the agent’s miles from cellphone coverage. Whether the agent’s capable of running a background check without touching a computer or following a target using a hundred eyes, he can see whatever he needs.

A statistically significant number of agents who undergo the Wintergreen Process awaken research-based powers, as Wintergreen’s original research was into ESP and accessing sources of information. Those scientists Vanguard has tasked with improving the process have noted the trend, but lack Dr. Wintergreen’s insights into the human brain.

• Network
Agents who can’t find what they need make pretty poor researchers. If they possess this power, they know where to start looking. An agent concentrates hard on what she wants to find — the power only works on inanimate objects, and she has to be specific — and she knows where it is.

While it’s useful for showing up the agent who forgets his car keys, the power has broader applications: an agent with this power picks up clues from the surrounding area as well as her memory. If she’s in a library, archive, or some other place where information is stored according to some kind of pattern, she knows precisely which shelf to go to, even if she’s never been in that building before.

Cost: 1 point of bashing damage

Action: Instant

Dice Pool: Teleinformatics + Academics

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The agent misinterprets the clues, sending her on a wild goose chase. Sometimes she wastes her time or the power points her to places that she’d rather not be.

Failure: The agent gets no clues as to what she’s looking for.

Success: The agent knows where she needs to look. If she’s outside, or in the wrong building, she

knows which building to look in, out to a quarter mile radius. If she’s in the right building, she knows what room to look in. If she’s in the same room, she narrows her search down to a 10-yard radius. On the off-chance that she’s looking for something reasonably common, like a specific brand of cigarette or a specific make of gun in a firing range, she knows the location of the closest instance of that item.

Exceptional Success: The character knows just where to look. If she’s outside, she knows which room in which building. If she’s in the same building, she knows to a 10-yard radius. If she’s in the same room, she knows precisely where her target is.

•• Deep Background
Even with computers, background checks take time. Often, the first that a VASCU agent learns about projecting her senses involves speeding up the process. Working from a single piece of information — a photograph, a name, address, or license plate, for example — she can trace back, digging up everything from criminal records to bank details, credit reports, phone records, even down to individual school report cards. As long as the agent has an Internet connection, she can find whatever she needs.

The number of successes required depends on the nature of information the agent wants to get. For convenience, the five most likely sources of information are abstracted as follows: criminal record (covers crimes committed, records of arrest, and presence on sex offenders register), credit file (indicating the amount of credit the subject has, along with the extent and nature of any loans), phone records (all calls made from one phone line), bank records (details of transactions, including ATM withdrawals with location), and medical records (details of all visits to doctors and all treatment).

Each source requires three successes on the roll, so requesting the suspect’s credit file and bank records would require six successes. Each document covers the last month unless the agent specifies otherwise. If an agent wants some other information — educational records, or child protection records — it adds another three successes to the total required.

Rushing through distinctly different systems stresses an agent’s mind, and the more time she spends engaged in background checks, the more damage she suffers.

Cost: 1 point of bashing damage per roll

Action: Extended (3-15 successes; each roll represents 30 seconds)

Dice Pool: Teleinformatics + Computer

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The agent follows a bad link, ending up with the wrong information — not that she knows it at the time. Failure: The agent probes the records, but can’t find what she’s looking for yet.

Success: The agent recovers the records she’s after. The Storyteller should furnish her with any pertinent information based on the records she searched for. Further Investigation rolls against her target gain 9-again.

Exceptional Success: Searching through the records turns something up that the agent wasn’t looking for, but is even more helpful. The Storyteller should include an extra source of information that the character didn’t request but that contains something pertinent to the investigation.

Suggested Modifiers

0 Agent has subject’s unique ID — social security number, passport, etc.

-1 Agent has subject’s name, address, and photograph, but nothing unique.

-2 Agent has some ID, but is missing at least one piece.

-2 Subject used a false name.

-3 Agent only has name, address, or license plate.

-4 Subject used a false identity with its own unique ID.

••• Bookworm
The agent has synchronized her mind with the vast amount of information available across the world. She no longer needs to spend hours reading through books and case notes in order to research her target. Instead, all she has to do is focus, and the information comes to her unbidden. She has an instinctive understanding of just about everything that’s available to the public, just waiting behind her eyes for her to call upon it. Even restricted information is open to her, as long as she has some token of her authority — her FBI badge, for example.

Cost: 1 Willpower + 1 point of lethal damage

The agent automatically succeeds at any Academics or Occult based research action. She gains a normal success on the action with no roll required. This power takes 30 seconds if the agent has some means close to hand that would help her carry out the research normally — simply being in a library or holding a laptop computer is sufficient.

If the agent has no means of making a Research roll, or is accessing non-public information, her automatic success takes two minutes. The agent loses her Defense for the duration of this power.

•••• Tag
The agent can send her mind through any kind of network in order to follow a suspect. This power isn’t the classic form of remote viewing — the agent co-opts anything with a lens to act as her eyes, from a store’s CCTV to an ATM camera to the dashboard camera in a cop car. With concentration, she can even use the eyes of animals to help her out — while cats and rats are fair game, higher animals are too complex. Though she may borrow their senses, the communication is strictly one-way — the agent can’t exert any control over the animal. Most agents use this power from a “backup” position, remaining in a safe location and tailing the target. The target’s actions can be useful for building a psychological profile or for getting access to the target’s records — using Deep Background on a target that an agent has followed with Tag receives a two dice bonus.

Cost: 1 point of lethal damage, optionally 1 Willpower

Action: Instant Dice Pool: Teleinformatics + Streetwise

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The agent follows someone who looks like the target, rather than the target. Any Investigation rolls made against the target suffer a -2 modifier.

Failure: Despite her best efforts, the agent loses her target.

Success: Using cameras as her eyes, the agent can follow her target without ever being observed. She has to remain within 500 yards per dot of Teleinformatics, but the agent doesn’t need any obvious connection to the target. Each success allows her to follow her target for five minutes. Spending a point of Willpower allows the agent to see through animals as well as machines. This is mostly beneficial in rural areas without CCTV and every other person carrying a camera-phone.

All rolls made by the agent’s cell to track the suspect, or to create a psychological profile or run a background check, gain a +2 bonus. The agent must concentrate on this power. She can talk, but does not apply her Defense against incoming attacks. Taking a Reflexive action, or receiving damage, requires the agent to succeed in a Resolve + Composure roll. If the agent fails, the power ends prematurely.

Exceptional Success: The agent gets a good look at his suspect throughout the chase. If his cell confronts the subject while this power is active, they automatically gain surprise.

••••• Omnicompetence
An agent with this ability can use the sum total of information in the world for more than just background reading. Tactical manuals and weapon specifications give her an understanding of how to shoot any firearm she can get her hands on. The combined occult lore of everyone from Enki of Sumeria to Aleistair Crowley is there when she needs it. She can instantly research any field that she requires, learning in seconds what normally takes years of practice and dedication.

Using this power, an agent can become an expert in one field, or become the jack of all trades that her cell needs to catch a particularly vicious killer.

When activating this power, the player must choose whether he wants to increase just one Skill, or one group of Skills (Mental, Physical, or Social). Increasing one Skill costs one point of lethal damage — though the agent must possess that skill in the first place. Increasing a group of Skills takes one point of aggravated damage. This ability can only be used once per scene.

Cost: 1 point of lethal or aggravated damage

Action: Instant

Dice Pool: Teleinformatics + Larceny

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The character is overwhelmed with the sheer volume of information available. All uses of Skills in the same category (even if the agent only wanted to increase one Skill) suffer the penalty for untrained use.

Failure: The agent can’t focus enough to increase his Skills.

Success: The agent reaches out to the world’s supply of information, absorbing and integrating everything that’s available. If the agent chose to increase one Skill, he temporarily increases his rating in that Skill to five dots until the end of the scene.

If the agent chose to increase a group of Skills, he raises each Skill in that group to three dots for the rest of the scene. If he already possessed three dots or more in a given Skill, that Skill is unaffected. Each Skill increased by this ability loses 10-again. The effects of this power last for a scene.

Example: Agent Turner faces a bestial slasher who acts more animal than human. Attempting to counter that, he opts to boost his Physical Skills with Omnicompetence. He takes a point of aggravated damage and rolls a success. Looking down his Physical Skills, he has Brawl 3, Drive 4, and Stealth 3. Those Skills are unaffected. He rolls all his other Physical Skills as if he has three dots in them, though he doesn’t re-roll 10s when using those Skills.

Exceptional Success: The hunter retains some of the knowledge granted by this power even after it ends. The player may immediately increase any one Skill affected by this power with experience points. Note that this result doesn’t grant extra experience points, just a chance to spend them in the middle of a story.