Once I got out of the immediate area of the Doctor and Master’s fight, I did a quick scan to make sure I’d lost the groupies, and hit the recall device on my costume. There was a moment of disorientation, as there always was when teleporting long distances not under your own power. Still, the world phased back into focus, and I found myself looking at the familiar sight of my lair.

The recall device was a bit of tech that I had stolen from another supervillain, along with the base teleporter setup it was paired to. Basically, I hit the button, and the device yoinked me away from where I was, and put me down in my lair. It was a nice piece of kit, that allowed me to get out of hairy situations, with a range that could get anywhere on Earth, or even into low orbit. That feature had been very useful on the few times I’d needed to pull a job in space. Only problem was that the recall device had a recharge time of a week.

I set the device on its dedicated charger, and reached for the extradimensional bag I’d stored most of my loot in. Only, I soon found that it only had the few items I put in there after the System came online, and it was… just a normal bag. Most of the loot I had stolen was just gone!

Knowledge Skill (The System), (14-): 3d6 = 10 (Success)

The knowledge from my System Administrator package kicked in, filling in the blanks. I still wasn’t used to that, but I’d figure all that out later. First, I needed to think about what the knowledge told me.

The System had basically decided that extradimensional storage spaces were not allowed, and had closed all of them off. The dimensions, and whatever was in them, weren’t gone, as far as I could tell, but reaching into the bag to pull something from the pocket dimension wasn’t going to work. The only way to get to those storage spaces would be to actually go to the pocket dimensions, unless someone figured out a workaround.

According to the knowledge I was given, the System disliked dimensional shenanigans in general, but there was allowance for travel between dimensions. That travel cost was expensive, in terms of points, and it went up the more dimensions you could get to. That was going to hurt a bunch of the mystic types, who loved having their homes be in different dimensions.

Actually, even the ‘expanded space’ for the Doctor and Master’s alien ships counted as a kind of dimensional movement, and required extra points of the ‘Vehicles & Bases’ Perk to pay for it. That caused me to frown. Vehicles and bases were perks? I brought up my Perks sheet with a wave of the hand.

Perks

Perk

Cost

Notes

Computer Link

10

System Access (Administrator)

Anonymity

3

False Identity

1

Fringe Benefit

1

Passport

Money

6

Wealthy (Millionaire)

Vehicles & Bases

40

Iceblade’s Lair

Total Spent

61

Ok, it looked like the System considered my administrator privileges to be this ‘Computer Link’ thing. It allowed me access to the information stores in a galactic-level system, which made sense, to a point. I would have to play around with things and see what kind of admin abilities I had. I doubted I’d suddenly be able to rewrite reality or anything like that, but I was sure I’d find a use for it.

The other perks all looked pretty normal. Anonymity reflected how I disappeared off the grid when I was younger, making it so no one knew who I was, and I’d limited how much the authorities could know about me since then. False Identity would be the ID under an assumed name I had for when I needed to do things in a more civilian guise, which also explained the passport. The Money thing checked out, since I had just under ten million in my offshore bank account, and a yearly income that just broke seven figures.

Which left a whopping forty points spent on my lair. Doing a quick check, I found that those forty points came out to giving my lair 200 base points, and another 65 points from disadvantages. If you went by point totals alone, the base was almost half as powerful as I was!

I took a breath, and forced myself to think. Then I said fuck that, went to the bar, and grabbed a bottle of whiskey and a glass. This wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted to wrap my head around sober.

Once I had some alcohol in me, I started going through the basics of this System, starting with Characteristics. There were Primary Characteristics, and Figured Characteristics, at least for creatures. Vehicles and bases seemed to work a bit differently.

Anyway, there were eight primary characteristics. STR, DEX, CON, BODY, INT, EGO, PRE, COM. Those eight characteristics broke down roughly into ‘physical’ and ‘mental’ characteristics, and determined the baseline of what a person could do.

STR, or Strength, determined how much you could lift, how hard you could hit someone, and even how far you could jump. Activities that didn’t require conscious effort could be done as something called a ‘Zero Phase Action’, while using your STR to the fullest took more. And any use of STR, whether it was for casually picking something up, jumping, throwing something, or whatever all used some resource called END or Endurance.

DEX, or Dexterity, covered reaction speed and fine motor control. It was useful in a bunch of skills, apparently, but the main thing it did was increase your SPD, or Speed, which was a Figured Characteristic. It also helped with not only hitting a target, but avoiding incoming attacks, by affecting a creature’s CV, or Combat Value.

CON, or Constitution, was a measure of someone’s physical health and hardiness. This meant it added to a bunch of Figured Characteristics. With a high CON, it was easier to shrug off, or recover from, damage. It also affected things like resisting poison and disease.

BODY was literally how much of a bullet sponge you were. The more BODY you had, the more damage you took before dying, and it also boosted your STUN, which was nonlethal damage, from the look of it. This made BODY something that you couldn’t just overlook.

INT, or Intelligence, was not really the level of knowledge someone had, but rather how quickly they could take in and process information. An idiot and a genius could both have an INT of 10, for instance. That made it important for a lot of skills, as well as the basis for Perception.

EGO, on the other hand, was a person’s mental strength. The higher that was, the harder it was to sway them, or affect them with mental powers. It also made it easier to overcome any Psychological Limitations they had in their Disadvantages.

PRE, or Presence, was exactly what it sounded like, a measure of a person’s force of personality, confidence, and charisma. In other words, it was all those things that allowed them to impress people. It not only allowed them to impress others, but helped with resisting others’ Presence.

COM, or Comeliness, rounded out the Primary Characteristics. Just as one might expect, it was a reflection of how attractive you were. The higher it was, the prettier you were. And if it went into the negatives, well, your ugliness would help with scaring people.

Figured Characteristics, were, well, figured by doing math on one or more Primary Characteristics. You could raise them separately, of course, but those characteristics would help provide the floor for how low the different figured characteristics could normally go. These figured characteristics were not quite as important as the primary characteristics, but that didn’t mean one could just ignore them.

PD and ED were Physical Defense and Energy Defense, respectively, and they came in ‘normal’ and ‘resistant’ defenses. PD had a base value of STR/5, and ED had a base of CON/5. Your PD and ED subtracted from the amount of damage you received from attacks, making them really important numbers.

SPD, or Speed, was complicated. Apparently, things like Combat were split up into twelve-second intervals called ‘Turns’, and each Turn had twelve ‘Segments’. The higher your SPD, the more Segments you could act on in a Turn. Your base SPD was DEX/10.

REC, or Recovery, was a representation of how quickly you recovered from exhaustion or getting knocked out. It had a base value of (STR/5)+(CON/5). Each point of REC let you recover a point of STUN and END after every Turn. So, it let you use powerful attacks more often, and heal more quickly.

END stood for Endurance. This was basically something like your stamina, or how long you could exert yourself. Using most powers, moving, or other such things spent END, like a resource. END started at CONx2.

STUN was, well, nonlethal damage was the best way to describe it. Bruises, all the way up to concussions. It started at BODY+(STR/2)+(CON/2), and if it ever hit 0, you were knocked out, until you managed to recover.

Characteristics

Primary Char

Base / Total / Cost

Roll

Notes

STR

10 / 20 / 0

13-

HTH Damage 4d6

END [2]

DEX

20 / 30 / 30

15-

OCV 10, DCV 10

CON

15 / 15 / 10

12-

BODY

15 / 25 / 10

14-

INT

15 / 15 / 5

12-

PER roll 12-

EGO

20 / 20 / 20

13-

ECV 7

PRE

20 / 50 / 10

19-

PRE Attack 10d6

COM

20 / 70 / 5

23-

Figured Char

Base / Total

Cost

Notes

SPD

3.0 / 6

0

Phases 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12

REC

9 / 9

8

END

30 / 30

0

STUN

30 / 50

2

Defense

Base / Total

Cost

Notes

PD

10 / 30

8

10/30 PD (0/20 rPD)

ED

10 / 30

7

10/30 ED (0/20 rED)

Movement

Base / Total

Cost

Notes

Running

6 / 8”

0

End [2]

Swimming

2 / 4”

0

End [2]

Leaping

4.0 / 6”

0

6” forward, 3” upward

Total Cost

115

With a thought, I pulled up my Characteristics. It was getting easier to summon the blue boxes as I used it. Not like a new skill, though. It felt almost like when you learned to ride a bike as a child, and then got on a bike after not riding for years. Your body still knew the motions, but they were unfamiliar, rusty. That was the feeling I got from using the System, like it was always supposed to be there, but, for a large part of human history, it had been absent.

Hmm. It also included different types of movement. Well, those were all pretty self-explanatory, except for the quote symbol. A quick check told me that the System used that mark for a span that was roughly two meters, rather than one inch. It seemed that, once again, the System didn’t give a shit about the Imperial System. That’d take some getting used to, but it was worth knowing.

At any rate, I saw the numbers. Unfortunately, the numbers didn’t mean anything to me. After all, I had nothing to compare them to.

Knowledge Skill (The System), (14-): 3d6 = 9 (Success)

Characteristics Comparison Table 1/2

Char

Weak

Challenged

Average

Skilled

STR

1-2

3-5

6-10

11-13

DEX

1-2

3-5

6-10

11-13

CON

1-2

3-5

6-10

11-13

BODY

1-2

3-5

6-10

11-13

INT

1-2

3-5

6-10

11-13

EGO

1-2

3-5

6-10

11-13

PRE

1-2

3-5

6-10

11-13

COM

1-2

3-5

6-10

11-13

PD, ED

0-1

1-2

3-4

5-6

SPD

1

1-2

1-2

2-3

REC

1

1-2

2-4

5-6

END

2-4

6-10

11-20

21-26

STUN

3-4

7-11

12-20

21-27

Running

1”

2-3”

4-6”

7-8”

Leaping

0”

1”

2”

3”

Swimming

0”

1”

2”

3”

Characteristics Comparison Table 2/2

Char

Competent

Legendary

Superhuman

STR

14-20

21-30

31+

DEX

14-20

21-30

31+

CON

14-20

21-30

31+

BODY

14-20

21-30

31+

INT

14-20

21-30

31+

EGO

14-20

21-30

31+

PRE

14-20

21-30

31+

COM

14-20

21-30

31+

PD, ED

7-10

11-15

16+

SPD

4-5

6-7

8+

REC

7-10

11-13

14+

END

27-40

41-60

61+

STUN

28-40

41-60

61+

Running

9-10”

11-13”

14”+

Leaping

4-5”

6-11”

12”+

Swimming

4-5”

6-9”

10”+

So, if I was reading these charts, and the ones before, correctly, then the ‘Base’ numbers were what I had naturally, while the ‘Total’ numbers were what I had with all my gear on. Without my gear, I was basically ‘competent’ at most things, as far as the characteristics went, and thoroughly average when it came to movement. With the gear, though, several of those things went up, with some of them straying into Legendary and Superhuman levels.

That was in line with my expectations, honestly. I would be the first to say that my costume augmented my abilities to a scary degree, after all. But the question was, what would this do for my other abilities, like Skills, or my Powers?